Chapter 4: Raise Your Expectations

There is so much children are capable of, if only someone takes the time and energy to tell them it's possible.  This class along with others I have taken as part of my Masters in Elementary Subject Matter have really opened my eyes and reminded me that encouraging, sharing, and demonstrating are ways to empower students.  Chapter 4 talked about what students really are capable of when it comes to writing.  I work quite a bit with second grade students during reading and writing time.  One thing I have noticed (which I pointed out and praised the students for) with this class is the complexity of their vocabulary journals through out the year has gotten better.With this class particularly, I have found that the students know what they want to say, but aren't sure how to say it.  One strategy I have used to help this is to sit down with the student and talk with them about what they want to write, using that day's vocab word.  Then together we assemble one or two sentences.  Then, I write their sentence on their white board. The whole process takes about 3 minutes.  This has provided a great opportunity for quick conventions and spelling lessons.  Plus, if I have already helped a student with a particular convention or word and another student comes up with the same problem I send them to the first student for help.  This helps both parties learn, then I end up with two "experts" to help.  Last week one student, Alyssa, wanted to write about Babe Ruth using the word inspire.  After putting together the sentence "Babe Ruth inspired many baseball players."  She said "Miss Atwood, that's not long enough.  I want to write more!"  We then had to continue our discussion and ended up with "Babe Ruth was a great baseball player.  He inspired many future baseball players." (or something like that anyway...I can't remember).  It may not be absolutely wonderful, but I was excited to hear that she wanted to write more than usual.  It is wonderful to see the expectations for students continue to rise and the students continue to meet them! 
Students have to write to get better at writing, there is no way around it.  Teaching the kids that it's ok to make mistakes and explore with new words is a powerful way to challenge their writing.

I agree that what gets published should be correct.  Through the drafting process you can show students what real writers do...multiple drafts until their writing is great.  I have been taught to edit student papers/stories in two ways.  One person told me to conference and make all corrections necessary.  Then have the student make another draft.  From the second draft go to the final copy.  The other way was to correct with the student or have a peer correct mistakes that the student notices.  Then write a second draft.  The second draft is the one that I will go through with the student making other corrections necessary, ones that the student may not be aware of yet, such as unfamiliar word spellings or punctuation usage.