Welcome to our book study on Jennifer Serravallo's The Writing Strategies Book. Educators in the state of Pennsylvania can earn Act 48 hours (continuing education hours) for successful completion of the book study. Successful completion of the book study is defined as independent reading of the text and posting a least one comment to each blog post during the course of the study. If you are interested in signing up to receive emails when new blog posts are posted and/or wish to receive Act 48 hours for participation click here. We hope you will join us for this exciting way to interact about The Writing Strategies Book.
Our first host is Michael Williams, a second grade teacher from Harrisburg, PA. Michael writes: The first section of the book, "Getting Started," is an introduction section of the book to read. Jennifer uses these first few pages to explain how she organized the book and the principles, research, and theory behind the strategies contained in each goal. She provides helpful hints on how to navigate through the book. When reading this very important section (don't skip it), I found myself stopping several times throughout to reread, reflect, reread, refine my thinking, and yes, reread again. Writing is such a complex process, unique to each individual, that I had to stop and think how this would apply to myself as a writer and how I would apply this in my classroom for my students. One of the most thought provoking sections of this introduction was the "Setting Up the Classroom to Support Independence." Teachers, most of them, love anchor charts. However, the organization of these anchor charts can be overwhelming and time consuming. Jennifer suggests that during writing conferences, you can provide a writing goal sheet with the strategies that could help the writer. This goal sheet can be with the writer at all times and become a personal, go-to resource. How do you make goals and strategies visible to students during their writing time? How have your students become more independent during writing time? The second section of the introduction that struck a cord with me was "How the Strategies in This Book Might Fit Into Your Classroom." Jennifer explains how you can use The Writing Strategies Book to plan a unit of study, manage conferring and small group instruction, and how to use the strategies within a variety of literacy programs. I felt empowered after reading this section as I felt that this resource alone could serve as the whole foundation of my lesson plans for all my units of writing. Jennifer mentions how you might use this book with certain programs or approaches to writing. How do you see yourself using this book within your current program or approach to writing in your classroom? What changes will you need to make to your writing instruction based on what you have read so far?
16 Comments
Kelly Wintemute
4/17/2017 04:57:17 am
I post our daily target or goal in the front of the classroom. The students put their own weekly writing goal on a post it which is either put in the front of their writing notebook or on a bulletin board. I have numerous anchor charts posted in the room. The students also have handouts of these charts in their writing folders. My students are using the google docs feature that allows the text to be read back to them in order to assist them in editing their own work.
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Michael Williams
4/17/2017 08:09:54 pm
Our dustrict has Calkins Unit of Study as a resource to teach our curriculum maps. I find The Writing Strategies Book, easier to follow and use than the Calkins books. The Google docs feature sounds interesting, worth checking out as my second graders struggle with rereading their work to make revisions. What grade level do you work with?
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Miranda Aaron
4/18/2017 04:56:45 pm
I agree in finding a lot of great information in the Getting Started section and definitely don't think it should be overlooked! Something that stood out to me what when she describes goals being the what of writing and the strategies being the how. I liked the quote, "Choosing to teach strategies means that we are deliberately teaching the writer not the writing" on page 16. I think it is easy for me to get caught up in fixing the specific piece of writing. I'm especially excited to read about strategies for helping kids through the revision process.
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Michael Williams
4/18/2017 07:54:40 pm
Miranda, I agree with you about working with students in groups and having group goals. Just like reading and math, writers have similar strengths and challenges. By working with writers together in groups makes it more meaningful for the writers and easier for teachers.
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Emily Reed
4/26/2017 07:06:55 am
I liked the quote, "Choosing to teach strategies means that we are deliberately teaching the writer not the writing" on page 16.
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Christine Hartzman
4/27/2017 09:56:47 am
I LOVE that quote as well. Sometimes, we get so caught up in the "what" we forget about the needs of the students.
Christine Hartzman
4/19/2017 05:13:53 am
In my role as an instructional coach, I have been using the book in classrooms with secondary teachers in 7th and 8th grade classrooms. One of the things we found to be helpful as well as important in terms of goal setting is to choose ONE goal when working with individual students. Teachers can support this goal by looking for and teaching a strategy that will help the student. After working on the strategy, offering the student other strategies to use with that goal in mind allows for choice.
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Michael Williams
4/23/2017 07:44:05 pm
I keep anchor charts up for the unit of study. I like the idea of creating a binder of anchor charts that have been used so that students can refer back to them. This would be in addition to personal strategies used during goal setting conferences, which would be student specific.
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Emily Reed
4/26/2017 07:09:16 am
My teachers all keep anchor charts. But I do love the idea of creating the binder so they can refer back. You only have so much space for all of the charts. I might try this next year with my teachers. 4/22/2017 07:27:47 am
First of all, I want to thank everyone for participating. The comments listed so far have been very helpful to me. I am a reading specialist trying to find the balance of reading and writing instruction in a small time frame, often 5 or 6 kiddos that are well below grade level.
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Michael Williams
4/23/2017 07:48:19 pm
I like how the strategies are leveled in this book. A writer can be emergent with certain strategies, but on grade level or advanced for other strategies. This could also change based on the mode of writing. I like hearing the thoughts from the professionals and how they apply the text with their students.
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Gretchen Vogle
4/23/2017 01:24:50 pm
I really liked how this section gave many different ideas on how to use this book in your classroom. How I utilize it in my second grade classroom would look different than that of a middle school classroom. Additionally, it was nice of Jennifer Serravallo to acknowledge that some schools are already tied to a specific writing curriculum and identify how they could still use this book as a resource.
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Michael Williams
4/23/2017 07:51:24 pm
I like the bookmark idea as well. I think that is my big take away from this section. It seems like a great way to help writers to apply their strategies not only in their writing, but also to find how authors use the strategies in the texts that they read. Conferring is hard for me. I seem to always get stuck with the most struggling writers.
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Aileen Hower
4/24/2017 05:51:16 am
I agree that setting goals during individual conferring time, and making sure to link goals to strategies by having them recorded on a personal sheet or within the writer's notebook would be helpful. With anchor charts, or information contained within the notebook, writers can be guided to refer back to previous lessons to grow in their independence.
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Carol Johnston
4/30/2017 08:49:55 am
I was impressed with Serravallo's thoughtful and complete perspective with regard to teaching and developing writers. Several concepts impressed me.
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Ashley Oyer
5/3/2017 07:06:16 pm
After reading the book (yes, I was so excited that I read the book cover to cover in a few evenings), the layout of the book had me hooked. I like how resourceful Jennifer’s book is while planning with other materials. Setting goals for each student during conferring time is beneficial to the writer and for me as the teacher. I’m a hands-on learning type of teacher. And as a learner, I need a visual to understand concepts, as do many of my students. Serravallo helped me to recreate the anchor charts I had already created. I’m also picky about how they look and take up space in my classroom. I’ve made some and posted them via SmartBoard during my lesson, as well as creating interactive writing notebooks and a foldable for my students to easily refer to. Honestly, this has been a game changer. My students actually refer to their goals when they have a visual that is easy to access. The accessibility has been a great resource when conferring.
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