Chapter 5 & 6

Chapter fives gives really great ideas and strategies for helping our students to become writers through Writing Workshop. The use of “flip pads” was one tool that I thought would be useful. The writer explains that a flip pad is a small notebook that the students carry around with them both during school and at home. Whenever a fresh, new idea for story or writing topic comes to mind, they can immediately jot it down. The students are apt to come up with extra ideas through this method because they will not waste time searching for paper and pencil. They begin to live more like a writer as they pay closer attention to the environment around them. I also feel that the memory banks strategy can be very effective in stimulating writing ideas. By sharing memories with the class, the children will begin to think of their own experiences and, hopefully, pull writing topics from their personal “memory bank”. After practice, it becomes easier for the student to reflect back into their memories and write stories based off what they recall. As teachers we need to motivate our students to know and understand what it means to tell your own personal story, and that everyone’s story is worth telling.

                During the student conferences, it is our job to praise the student and make him feel good about himself, while at the same time, pointing our areas of improvement.  We should always push and motivate the children to achieve higher goals. One of the challenges for many people when first beginning this method, is learning to look at the student work and thinking about not just that one student but all the students. Usually there will be more than one student struggling with the same area of the writing process. You can use one student’s work to help others improve as well. You use your students as a teachable moment. I really appreciated the examples in this chapter. I have never seen a conference wrote out in that way and it really helped to visualize the best approaches to helping the student succeed. Also, at the end of the chapter the troubleshooting techniques were extremely helpful and encouraging.