Teacher Inquiry Essay
I applied to The Writing Project because I was lacking in teaching writing. There just wasn’t enough writing in my classroom and what I did have wasn’t really taught with structure. I am actually ashamed about the lack of writing in my class And that the last essay of the year is the first one I finally broke down because students were making silly mistakes. And after all the amazing and easy techniques I have learned in the last nine days I no longer have to be ashamed; I have a place to start.
When we met in May I wrote that the number one failure, in my eyes, was the research paper. Many, many things went wrong in this unit. First, in one class I had only assigned one essay the semester before. Second, I had not scaffolded the skills necessary to pull off a traditional research paper. I failed to scaffold the writing process. Conferencing with students about what they had written was rare. This year I was the new teacher so I followed the unit as written by the previous teachers. It was originally built for 90 minute blocks and we had just transitioned to 50 minute periods. We began with presentations from the librarian. She taught a lesson about reliable sources and then a lesson about the library computer resources. Each had a corresponding assignment that I ultimately had to cut because student lack of technology knowledge wasn’t going to leave them with time to do their research. The calendar allowed seven library days. This included research time and writing time. The majority of the library days were just before the paper was due, meant for typing the final draft. Not many students met the small deadlines each week, so conferencing rarely happened. The other seven days the students were expected to continue their work on their own. I felt that time was an issue, if I could have had more in class time I might have been able to have more student conversations.
The end of the school year left me wondering how best to scaffold writing so that students could be more successful writing their research paper. I also wondered how I could restructure the unit to allow more time. And finally how can I get students to actually follow the writing process. Also, my school is doing some work with the flipped classroom. I wanted to figure out what writing would look like in a flipped classroom.
I spent the few weeks between when school got out and the SI began going around and around, never really deciding on one issue to focus on. I did know that the research paper needed help above all. I finally was able to talk with Dylan about my research and he was concerned that the research paper included too many skills for one inquiry question. From that discussion I seemed to settle on getting the students able to choose topics that they would be truly interested in.
As each SI member presents their TIW I am constantly reminded that writing is a path to learning, that students need to be critical thinkers, and students should be creating questions. Two speakers stuck in my head from last week, they are Ted and Dr. Volmer. Ted demonstrated a train of thought strategy. This is an activity that I can do throughout the year so that students get used to asking questions that might not have an answer. Dr. Volmer spoke about teaching genre. Most students have never seen a research paper in their life. Looking at models and analyzing the genre will help students know what has to be there. We also learned about constraint vs. creativity. To make their voices heard students have to make choices in their writing within the constraints of the genre. At this point my inquiry lends more toward generating questions and teaching about the genre.
It wasn’t until meeting with Write Club that they were able to talk me down into one focus inquiry and that is, how do I scaffold student writing in first semester so that they are battle ready for the research paper?
I found activities for creating questions in Barry Lane’s work. These are activities that I can use to get my students writing and questioning throughout the semester. I also have ideas from this SI and my own creativity to make my students write daily and with literature.
Also in my reading I found two wonderful articles with activities that I plan to borrow for my classroom. The first activity that will help my students connect writing to the “real world” and ultimately will exercise their questioning and responding was from Paula Carbone. She wrote about using Commonplace books with her students. The activity is essentially a scrapbook of articles that students find and respond to. This makes me excited to see that they are having a discussion with a text. I would also allow them to include a collaboration group discussion.
The second article was from Deb Teitelbaum. She taught research skills by having student first list questions they had as children. From there she assigns them to write a children’s book to answer this question and they will read the books to children at the elementary school. In the end they are researching, citing, and creatively presenting ideas for an authentic audience. She essentially asks, is it important to write a traditional research paper, or learn the skills of researching.
With the addition of more informal writing in class and the structures of the two assignments, I anticipate a better scaffolding toward research writing. I am also looking forward to the expert ideas from my fellow SI participants when I present on Monday.
When we met in May I wrote that the number one failure, in my eyes, was the research paper. Many, many things went wrong in this unit. First, in one class I had only assigned one essay the semester before. Second, I had not scaffolded the skills necessary to pull off a traditional research paper. I failed to scaffold the writing process. Conferencing with students about what they had written was rare. This year I was the new teacher so I followed the unit as written by the previous teachers. It was originally built for 90 minute blocks and we had just transitioned to 50 minute periods. We began with presentations from the librarian. She taught a lesson about reliable sources and then a lesson about the library computer resources. Each had a corresponding assignment that I ultimately had to cut because student lack of technology knowledge wasn’t going to leave them with time to do their research. The calendar allowed seven library days. This included research time and writing time. The majority of the library days were just before the paper was due, meant for typing the final draft. Not many students met the small deadlines each week, so conferencing rarely happened. The other seven days the students were expected to continue their work on their own. I felt that time was an issue, if I could have had more in class time I might have been able to have more student conversations.
The end of the school year left me wondering how best to scaffold writing so that students could be more successful writing their research paper. I also wondered how I could restructure the unit to allow more time. And finally how can I get students to actually follow the writing process. Also, my school is doing some work with the flipped classroom. I wanted to figure out what writing would look like in a flipped classroom.
I spent the few weeks between when school got out and the SI began going around and around, never really deciding on one issue to focus on. I did know that the research paper needed help above all. I finally was able to talk with Dylan about my research and he was concerned that the research paper included too many skills for one inquiry question. From that discussion I seemed to settle on getting the students able to choose topics that they would be truly interested in.
As each SI member presents their TIW I am constantly reminded that writing is a path to learning, that students need to be critical thinkers, and students should be creating questions. Two speakers stuck in my head from last week, they are Ted and Dr. Volmer. Ted demonstrated a train of thought strategy. This is an activity that I can do throughout the year so that students get used to asking questions that might not have an answer. Dr. Volmer spoke about teaching genre. Most students have never seen a research paper in their life. Looking at models and analyzing the genre will help students know what has to be there. We also learned about constraint vs. creativity. To make their voices heard students have to make choices in their writing within the constraints of the genre. At this point my inquiry lends more toward generating questions and teaching about the genre.
It wasn’t until meeting with Write Club that they were able to talk me down into one focus inquiry and that is, how do I scaffold student writing in first semester so that they are battle ready for the research paper?
I found activities for creating questions in Barry Lane’s work. These are activities that I can use to get my students writing and questioning throughout the semester. I also have ideas from this SI and my own creativity to make my students write daily and with literature.
Also in my reading I found two wonderful articles with activities that I plan to borrow for my classroom. The first activity that will help my students connect writing to the “real world” and ultimately will exercise their questioning and responding was from Paula Carbone. She wrote about using Commonplace books with her students. The activity is essentially a scrapbook of articles that students find and respond to. This makes me excited to see that they are having a discussion with a text. I would also allow them to include a collaboration group discussion.
The second article was from Deb Teitelbaum. She taught research skills by having student first list questions they had as children. From there she assigns them to write a children’s book to answer this question and they will read the books to children at the elementary school. In the end they are researching, citing, and creatively presenting ideas for an authentic audience. She essentially asks, is it important to write a traditional research paper, or learn the skills of researching.
With the addition of more informal writing in class and the structures of the two assignments, I anticipate a better scaffolding toward research writing. I am also looking forward to the expert ideas from my fellow SI participants when I present on Monday.