WRITE BESIDE THEM and Middle School Writing

I started reading this book a year or two ago (I can't honestly remember) when several teachers recommended it to me - several of whom were fellow participants in the Summer Leadership Institute for the Illinois Writing Project (a fantastic opportunity, and something I recommend to everyone, by the way).  So, I ran out and picked up a copy.  I read through the first 70 pages in a day or two.  The next 100 pages took more than a year.  This summer, I've finished the book - mostly because I bought another book by Penny Kittle (BOOK LOVE) and felt the need to finish one before starting the other.

So, comments about my weird reading history aside, the material in the book is pretty fantastic.  I envy some of the details of Kittle's teaching assignment (teaching a writing class? awesome!), and I know that her kids are different from mine.  So, I'd like to kind of "think aloud" about how to use this in middle school.

I've posted about the details of my teaching assignment before, and I don't want to go into too much detail.  Briefly, I teach in a suburban Title 1 middle school that uses a "teaming" concept (two or three teachers share a group of students and teach various subjects to the same group of kids, so that students have fewer teachers and teachers can collaborate better) and block scheduling.  Unfortunately, I only have one block (60 minutes) to teach both reading and writing (which are assigned separate grades, by me).  It's hard to teach a writing workshop when it means that you have to surrender all of your literacy time to writing.  I've done it, and it's worked really well almost all of the time (partly because I'm so passionate and motivated when it comes to teaching writing), but lately I've been trying other strategies that allow me to better emphasize both reading and writing at the same time.  So, a modified workshop, or a workshop built around "units of study" - genre-based study of texts, including close reading/analysis and then production/imitation of a text that fits that genre.

Anyway, what does this have to do with WRITE BESIDE THEM?

Let's start with a numbered list:

1. I really like her discussion of writing notebooks, something I use almost every day, and something that Kittle uses every day, too.  It's a place for "all of that bad writing that is essential to uncover good writing" (26) and a tool for helping students find their voice (27).  
2. I use her model of "quick writing" (Chapter 5), which has three important rules:
1. Write the entire time
2. Write quickly without letting the critic in your head censor you
3. Relax, have fun, play
3. She writes along with her students during these quick writes, and she shares her messy drafts so that they see her thinking on paper, and they see a writer making choices and revising.  
4. Heart Maps - Kittle got this idea from Georgia Heard, and it's a great way to get kids thinking about their "writing territories," something you can come back to later in the year when they say they don't have anything to write about.  
5. I love how she models re-reading of the quick writes - if kids are just writing and tossing the material, there's not much point in doing journals.  It's when they see value in the notebooks and are using what they come up with that these things are important and worthwhile.
6. Her overall flexibility and her willingness to adjust her teaching (and her expectations) to help kids.  Chapter 9, "Seeking Balance," should be required reading for anyone teaching writing to any person over age 10.  In a nutshell, Kittle argues that kids don't learn to write well when they are given writing assignments that they will never revise.  And many of the writing assignments given in English classes are first-draft, write-and-forget assignments.  She encourages letting go of some of the demands of literary analysis: not everything a kid writes in an English class in high school has to be about a literary classic.  Students don't learn effective writing when they have to write about something that doesn't matter to them.  True, that's not ALWAYS the case, and yes, students should be expected to do some literary analysis.  But writing a five-paragraph essay about THE SCARLET LETTER doesn't teach them very much about good writing.  They will probably learn about literary analysis, but that's not teaching writing.  
7. I like her discussion of conventions (grammar and mechanics), but I don't love it.  I don't think Kittle is the best voice on this subject (I prefer Jeff Anderson for this), but I think that she's developed a system for helping kids learn how to get better at conventions.  It's not the focus of what she does, but she addresses it.  Not everyone does, and not everyone who does manages to help kids retain and use better conventions.
8. Her discussion of feedback.  I loved the example she gave of the different ways that she was given feedback on something she wrote, and how that made her feel.  I think that we've all been there, as teachers and students, when we were given destructive or hurtful feedback on something we wrote that seemed to miss the goal we were striving for.  It's an excuse for the writer to ignore the feedback.  I really liked her discussion of it, and I think that it makes the point about how writers often feel about what they've written - how there's an element of trust involved in that exchange of written products - and how aggressive, insensitive comments can destroy any hope of helping the writer.  If you stomp on their fledgling ideas, they aren't going to share any more with you - or at least not any that matter to them.  And, if you manage the opposite, if you can sift through the messiest draft and find the nuggets of meaning, the funny part, the briefest glimmer of insight, and point that out to a student, then you've built trust.  You have a disciple.  Students identify with what they write, and they want you to find the gold in what they write, just like they want people to find the value in them.  It's a delicate thing, and it can be enormously positive and powerful if you become a skilled treasure-hunter.  
9. The craft of the book overall.  I've read books by teachers that were better written, but this is close to the top.  There were a couple of chapters and passages that really stood out to me.  Clearly, her writing matters to her, and she wants to convey her meaning appropriately and aptly.

I think I have more to say about this book, but I'm going to step away and think a bit more.  

Thinking about writing journals?

I'm starting to plan for my 6th year as a 7th grade reading/writing teacher at Chicago-area middle school, and I wanted to "think out loud" about writing journals/notebooks and their use in the middle-school language arts classroom.

There are several schools of thought on this, and a lot of powerful ways to use these things, as well as several possible ways to handle the logistics.

Here are some ways that I've used journals (let's just call them that for now) in the LA classroom:

1. As a daily "Do Now" or immediate activity done at the very start of class.  This strategy is useful to reinforce management and get students seated and working.  It helps maximize productive class time.  
2. As a less rigorously structured thinking or processing activity done at variable times during the class.  This might be something like, "Brainstorm a list of ways that you can use this strategy," or "Now that we understand what similes and metaphors are, write out some possible reasons that authors might use figurative language like this . . . ."  
3. As a way to enrich classroom or small-group discussion, as a kind of preparation or planning ahead for a focused conversation on a specific topic.  "Before we discuss the end of the story "Seventh Grade" by Gary Soto, let's write out our thinking about this question: do you think it was okay for the main character to pretend to know French to impress the girl?"  

There is at least one other really cool way to use journals - as the "writing notebook," a kind of catch-all or "commonplace book" that writers use to gather their thinking and random ideas.  I think Ralph Fletcher and Donald Murray are the big proponents of this type of tool.  If used appropriately, it's a fantastic resource that makes composing much easier.  I'd like to move in that direction, and I'm going to be digging into this idea a little more this year.  If I decide to go ahead with journals again this year, I will probably try this.  

As far as logistical challenges go, there are numerous ways to provide students with notebooks to use for daily in-class writing:  

1. Spiral, wire-bound notebooks 
2. the slightly more expensive "neatbook" or bound writing notebooks with no wires
3. A bundle of lined paper provided several times a year (through the district copying service)
4. A stapled, pre-designed packet of prompts with space to respond
5. Binders and loose-leaf notebook paper
6. BYON (bring-your-own-notebook)

All of these cost money, and every year except one, I have provided these notebooks to my students.  One year I created a packet of prompts and questions, and had production make copies for me.  They not very sturdy, and the pre-written prompts often didn't feel related to the issues discussed in other parts of the class.  This also made it difficult (or cumbersome) to use longer response-type prompts, such as responding to poetry, music, or pictures (something that I began using this year with great success).  

I've been able to pick up dozens of notebooks during back-to-school sales, and the expense has been minimal.  I prefer this approach because it makes all the notebooks match (which makes stacking and differentiating them from others much easier), and it helps establish a positive climate at the beginning of the school year (here's a free notebook!).  It also makes me feel less guilty about collecting and reading them, and often keeping them at the end of the year.  

Notebooks as journals are more flexible than the packets, because it's easier to stretch to accommodate different-sized entries, and a notebook allows more creativity than a packet.  It also doesn't require a desk or hard surface for writing - students can take notebooks with them on "field trips" to other parts of the building or outside (a very intriguing and under-utilized feature, at least in my class).  I've never had a student run out of room, though students definitely vary in the amount of writing they do.  

I think the year-long tool is helpful, too, with year-end portfolios (it enables much greater scope of reflection), and regular use of the journal during daily required writing time helps build good writing habits (many students wrote that they felt like they grew a lot as writers because of the daily writing time) and writing fluency.  

I think the biggest surprise for me was the amount of room left over in the notebooks at the end of the year.  I think that regular feedback helps most students (some students were uncomfortable with me collecting and reading notebooks, and I did the "mark the entries you want me to read" approach at least twice during the year), and I think the lesson is that I should be using notebooks more often, and more closely tying notebook writing to grades and to curriculum.  I'm considering a weekly writing assignment, over-and-above the daily in-class notebook writing and workshop writing time.  

So, in the end, this whole thing boils down to one essential question:

How can I get my students to use their writing notebooks more, both writing more in the notebooks and using the writing for other things more often?

I'll be digging through some professional books in the weeks ahead to look for some answers.