writing groups that work with special populations
TRANSCRIPT
A ToughAudience:
Writing Groups That Work With Special Populations
Writing Group NamesPeer GroupsWriting GroupsResponse GroupsFeedback GroupsPeer Editing Groups (Do not use so students
know groups are about revision not editing!)Reading/Writing GroupsHelping Circle or Writing Circle
How I Spent My (Teaching) Life In Jail
Oakton HSBoys Probation HouseIndiana Boys’ PrisonNorthwest Mental HealthReading/Writing Resource for the Interagency
Alternative Schools 45 Interagency Alternative Schools: Court, Mental
Health, Alcohol and Drug Rehab, Family Services
Setting Up Writing GroupsGet the students writing and feeling flow! See the following slides on how to do borrow a
line poetry.Utilize the rules of focused freewriting:
Write for three minutes (set timer)Do not stop writingDo not worry about grammar and mechanics (at
this point)Have students produce a lot of first draft writing
before choosing what to bring to their first writing group
Borrow a Line Poetry1. Respond to the reading in whatever way
comes to mind. What does the piece make you think of?
2. Write down a line and write from there.
NOTE: This is original writing. Do not critique the piece. Use the following poems to create something new!
Greyhound Across Oregon, 101 by Oscar Penaranda
The sun’s dusk raysspillover the gray sea –
clouds like paste thick silver dripping
against the powdered sky’spurple secret
I’m a long ways from home
The City Is So Big by Richard Garcia
The city is so bigIts bridges quake with fearI know, I have seen at night
The lights sliding from house to houseAnd trains pass with windows shiningLike a smile full of teeth
I have seen machines eating houses And stairways walk all by themselvesAnd elevator doors opening and closingAnd people disappear
BatsBy Mary Effie Lee Newsome
I’d really hate to go to bedJust swinging from some wall.
But bats, they say, do just that way.I’d not wish to at all.
I’d hate to swing down from my toesAll upside-down – and try to doze.
Keeping Hair By Ramona Wilson
My grandmother had braidsat the thickest, pencil wideheld with bright woolcut from her bed shawl.No teeth left but white haircombed and wet carefullyearly each morning.The small wild plants found
among stoneson the windy and brown plateausrevealed their secrets to her
handand yielded to her cooking pots.
She made a sweet amber waterfrom willows,boiling the life out to pour onto
her old head.“It will keep your hair.”She bathed my head oncerain water not sweeter.The thought that once when I
was so very young her work-bent hands
very gently and smoothlywashed my hair in the willowsmay also keep my heart.
Fishbowl ModelingModel what a poorly run writing group looks
like for the class:Prepare a few students to take on unhelpful
roles (ex: off-task, rude, relating too much)The teacher shares some writing with these
students while the rest of the class watches the “fishbowl” noting what is going well and not well
The class discusses the unhelpful behaviors and then discusses what writing group should do and look like to be successful
Repeat the fishbowl using positive roles
Teacher ModelingUse a piece of your own writing that is in
rough form.Post it so that all students can see the writing.Have students give you feedback on your
piece, highlighting how you would change the piece based on their comments.
Be sure to model the behaviors you expect in group and the types of feedback that help writers revise their work.
Give Students Specific QuestionsBe sure students understand that in order to
get good feedback they need to ask good questions about their writing.
Have students practice with the “General Writing Workshop Questions” on the next slide.
After students have success with these questions, teach them how to create their own specific questions during mini-lessons.
General Writing Workshop Questions
1. What possibilities do you see for this writing?
2. What question(s) do you have? What else would you like to know?
3. What is your favorite line/part and why?
*With a partner, use these questions to receive feedback on your borrow-a-line writing!
What the Experts Say:The Permeable and Dialogic
Curriculum
“Here’s my belief: You don’t learn to write by going through a series of preset writing exercises. You learn to write by grappling with a real subject that truly matters to you.”
--Ralph Fletcher, from What at Writer Needs
What the Experts Say:The Permeable and Dialogic
Curriculum“You know, I never ‘got it’ before. I never
understood why teachers made us get in these groups and ask each other for help. Now I get it… my friends know what I am talkin’ about, my friends know. They are the best ones to help with my writing. I just have to know what type of question to ask.”
--17 year old male in the mental health facility
What the Experts Say:Modeling and Mentoring
“I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It’s my personal approach that creates the climate. It’s my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.”
-- Haim Ginott, from Ralph Fletcher’s What a Writer Needs
What the Experts Say:Modeling and Mentoring
“Dear Kim: You are always carrying that damn book around. I mean, it is at lunch, in community meeting. It’s everywhere. I started wondering what was in that book that was so great that you would want to lug it around. Then you showed us. Now I have a big book to haul around, too. Damn it. I’m a writer. Something I never thought I’d be.”
--15 year old boy in the mental health facility in “Letter Quality” assignment
What the Experts Say:Writing Groups
“Peer response groups cause me the most unease. It’s the clearest indication that I’ve relinquished some control, that I’m trusting teenagers more to give and take what they need. A good part of my unease stems form my excessively high expectations for how peer groups should work. I have too much of that old ideal of teaching left in me: I ran the show, cracked the whip, acted upon the students, ever fearful that they might not be working if I didn’t ride the herd. Even I couldn’t function in the ideal peer response group I have in my head…Most students will risk saying more among their peers than with me. And, of course, the students can learn from each other in this close contact. So I live with my discomfort and let teenagers meet in groups.”
-- Tom Romano, from Clearing the Way
What the Experts Say:Writing Groups
“It’s the best part of class. I love meeting with my group. Even when I don’t agree with what they say, I like to hear what people hear when I read my writing aloud. I like that I am doing what Steven King and all the other great writers do. I was so nervous at first, but now I can’t write without my writing group. I just can’t.”
--15 year old girl in a court school
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