Chapter 1
I like Mrs. Reeve’s ideas of the word wall to have students share their new words in alphabetized sections, and the class book for the interview and the topic to encompass students in authentic writing tasks with the sense of accomplishment. In her classes, the students reconceptualized and reviewed the writing process in different authentic writing tasks, and she gave much modeling and support to scaffold students’ writing experience. In the interview task, she gave students enough preparation before doing the task, such as question-brainstorming list, which also made students more confident.
When I had my fieldwork in ACLP, I found a common phenomena that teachers used textbook exercises to practice and assess students’ writing skills. But the most effective way to teach mechanical skills is to provide an authentic context for writing practice during the writing process (Tompkins, 2008). And textbook exercises always pay more attention on results but not the process, which would make students feel they just write for tests but not for the real life so that they will lose motivations. And the authentic context for writing is especially very crucial for adult learners.
Chapter 2
I like the idea that Mrs. Zumwalt involved the class in rubric design, which gave students more powerful purposes to do the writing task. It is very hard to design authentic tasks day to day or class to class. So it may be a good idea, if the task itself is not so authentic for students, we can try to make the goal and the process more meaningful for students. It is especially meaningful for adults if the assessment is determined by students but not just by the teacher, they will feel the evaluation criterion is fairer to pursue.
Tompkins (2008) thinks that “the heart of writing workshop is independent writing” (p. 34), but I don’t agree with that. I think independent writing is the final goal of teaching writing, and the heart of writing workshop is writing conference. Writing conference is a natural way for students to internalize knowledge from peer teaching and a good opportunity for teachers to scaffold students’ learning process of input and output. And for the adult level, I think reading conference will substitute for reading aloud as one of the components of writing workshop.
Chapter 4
In my opinion, assessment is the most difficult part for teachers to implement, no matter what subjects they teach. It seems there is no ideal approach to evaluate students’ performance flexibly like informal monitoring and accurately as formal tests by balancing both learning process and result. Educators always suggest teachers to combine informal and formal assessments, but I cannot imagine what attitudes students will take towards so many assessments for just a few tasks in one quarter. And it is also unrealistic to achieve by teachers in countries like China, which has 50-70 students in one class.
Teachers in kindergartens or elementary schools pay more attention on informal assessments, while teachers in colleges or high schools more care about formal assessments. Many teachers think for adult learners, students should have the ability to self-assess and self-monitor, and the teachers’ role should be a judge. And in college, teachers always change even for the same subject, so it is very hard to keep track of students’ progress. But learning is “multidimensional and not adequately measured simply by counting the number of compositions” the students has done in the task (p. 76), and actually adult learners still need many informal assessments such as conferencing and checklists to scaffold their learning process.
Chapter 5
Journal writing is a good way to have students practice writing in their daily life. But maybe because it is used too frequently, both teachers and students lose interest. I think teachers should make more efforts in prompts and sharing part, because journals are radically used for students to record their personal experiences and feelings towards the outside world (Tompkins, 2008). For example, to read news, record feelings and share on the news wall in class; to do or make something different every day, write down experiences and feelings and share in the beginning of every class.
For the assessment of journals, teachers shouldn’t care too much about format, grammar or length, but should focus on the content and original thinking so that students will become brave and feel free to write. Journal writing is a good way to practice writing skills in every day, but it has a bigger function to motivate students’ interest in writing. Especially for college students, in their mind, writing is a huge project like research papers or the literature review, so when they try to write, they feel more stressful. So journal writing is a good way to embed writing in their daily life and let them feel that writing is not just an assignment, and they can have fun there, as long as the teacher doesn’t judge their works like scoring tests.
Chapter 6
“In simulated letters, children use their imagination to assume the role of another person and to reflect on their writing” (p. 125). Maybe it is a good idea for children, but I don’t think it is a good idea for adults. Actually students don’t need to simulate because they have so many real letter readers outside the classroom, and the teacher’s job is just to connect students with their readers. Authentic task with authentic audience is always the power to motivate students in learning, especially for writing. For example, to ask students to write a business letter via email to request a few students in the same school to complete survey questionnaires, and do the data statistics.
And I didn’t see Tompkins mentioned the sharing part of writing in the book, but in my opinion, the feedback from the reader is the most important part in writing. Letter writing shouldn’t stop at sending a finished letter, which is actually just the middle for its process. Sharing and getting feedback will give students more motivation and feeling of accomplishment. For example, for the idea of writing a friendly letter to invite classmates to attend the birthday party, after writing the letter, students should give their letter to the students they want to invite, and check how many guests would like to attend the party.
Response 1
I agree with Julie Murray that "the importance of knowing the student’s literacy level in the primary language." I think writing skills and strategies of native and foreign language should be taught at the same time by using students' first language to deepen their second language learning. In that way, students can make the better connection and understanding of writing skills and strategies of both native and foreign language. Otherwise, the comment traits of writing skills and strategies between students' first and second language will be separated in different classrooms so that both students and teachers have to waste time on the same learning and teaching vehicle.
And I also agree with Julie on the relationship between writing and reading -- "writing deepens reading abilities, and reading deepens writing." We know reading deepens writing, but we don't know writing can also deepen reading. I often see students are asked to read a lot to help them to write, but I rarely see they are asked to write a lot to help them to read. And I think reading and writing should happen at the same time. For example, firstly, a student reads the model and then imitate writing, and then he compares his own writing with the model to find out the strong and weak points in both his and model's. After getting the prior knowledge of the topic, the student reads other related materials about the same topic to see what other aspects he can include and expand in his future writing.
Response 2
Tomoko Snyder pointed out, "Writing workshop is a very effective approach in making students independent writers." Writing workshop is a place for students to internalize learning in a natural way. So it is very important to make it authentic that students can easily connect with their real life, prior knowledge and experience.
But she also indicated, "The researchers point out that teachers who try to implement writing workshop need more than innovation." I actually have the same concern. Writing workshop is effective for students to learn the real writing process, but the similar steps may make both students and teachers feel tired. Writing workshop needs an infusion of new blood. The teacher is used to separate writing workshop from minilesson and put it after minilesson, but I suggest to combine them or put workshop before, so students can make study really serve the practical purpose. And place first half of writing workshop before minilesson, students can have pre-experience to better serve the learning of new knowledge points.
Reference
Tompkins, G. E. (2008). Teaching writing: Balancing process and product. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.
