In reading Routman Chapters 7 and 8 this week, I am thinking of the differences between writing to prompts for WASL expectations,district standards and rubrics and with the kind of classroom that Routman is describing. Routman talks about having writing be meaningful for students and engaging students by teaching first and labeling writing later. In other words, we should let our teaching and our students get "hung up" with the terminology.(Routman,Ch.8,p. 195) I have noticed in my dyad placement with 5th grade students that my master teacher has a journal for each subject, science, math, writing and reading. Each one of these journals have table of contents and organizes both handouts which are glued into the journals, but lots of their own notes that they can refer to later on. At first, I thought of this as a great way to organize their work for these subjects, but after reading Routman, I can see that this also helps their writing for non fiction. By keeping these individual journals, the students get to use their own writing as a means to expose them to the notion of expository writing without the label. "Starting at kindergarten students should be introduced to nonfiction text with features such as table of contents, captions, headings, labels, diagrams, charts, drawings."(Routman,Ch 8, p.196). This is exactly what my 5th grade students are doing in their science journals. They are meeting that writing standard without really realizing it. Using state reports, research and writing journals to meet some of the state prompts; my master teacher is providing a framework for students establishing writing that is more meaningful to them.
In chapter 7, Routman talks about keeping standards in perspective. We can become exhausted trying to cover all the requirements. Routman tells teachers," I will teach your students how to do all that is required, but the easiest and most efficient way to do this is to first engage students in writing about topics that they care about for a reader who matter to them."(Routman,Ch 7, p.149) In using many modes to learn writing, letters, book reviews, journals, memoirs and non fiction writing; students will develop their writing stamina over time. You can use whole class sharing of good conventions and voice to elaborate on the standards that you are trying to meet. In my main placement with 2/3 grade students by giving the students time to read and write each day, the students are building their reading and writing skills. They have written letters, researched a topic that they were interested in and did a poster with collage and writing, wrote a short paragraph about their triorama on a read aloud book. My master teacher uses shared creation of word walls for these writing assignments. She is then serious about the students using the well placed word wall in their writing and has expectations that students will spell those words correctly. All these strategies are helping these kiddos to become better writers.
