Currents in Literacy

Confessions of a Second Grade Teacher

By Cindy Putt

Trying out something new in the classroom is a pretty overwhelming task for me. I always wonder: Am I going to like it? Will I be able to do it? How am I going to make it work? How will it effect my students? Will I be able to keep it going? Is it going to be more work than what I usually do? As I ask myself these questions I begin to feel the blood moving more rapidly through my veins, my heart pounds, and my muscles tighten. The sense of being overwhelmed takes over and I quickly dismiss any thought of trying something new. It would be way too much stress and work. So, why change my comfortable ways of teaching writing for something new?

In the past, I followed a prescribed program of lessons to conduct my writing program. I began with descriptive writing about an object in the beginning of the year. Then moved to a character and setting towards the middle of the year. Finally, the children wrote a fiction story that followed a story map. Each lesson had a prescribed topic and procedure: planning, writing, editing, and rewriting a final draft. By the end of the year the children got to choose the topic for their fiction story. I knew this program and I felt comfortable with it. Then something changed in the spring of 1999.

I was asked to attend a conference given by the author Ralph Fletcher. Fletcher is the author of many books for young readers and writing teachers. He spoke about how he finds his stories from his everyday world, and how he gathers the ideas in a notebook. Then he explained how when people write about something they know and are passionate about their voice will shine through. I immediately wanted to go out and get a writer's notebook. I began to think differently about writing. What was its purpose? Yes, there is a time and a place for writing a descriptive paragraph with a topic, details, and closing sentence. But, were the children really practicing the craft of writing? Were they really becoming authors? I pondered these questions on the beach over the summer. Suddenly my writing program didn't seem so great anymore. But, did I really want to change?

After a summer of reflecting on my writing practices, I began training in the Literacy Collaborative, a program from Lesley University that trains primary teachers in the literacy framework. Through this course I was introduced to the book Guided Reading by Irene Fountas and Gay Sue Pinnell. The book has an example of a writing folder with a great structure that lends itself to being the heart of the organization of the Writer's Workshop program. As I looked it over I thought to myself, "I can make that folder." This would be a great place to start. Suddenly, my vision of children writing stories, being at different steps in the process, and writing on different topics no longer seemed chaotic. But where and how would I start?

One of the great features of working with the Literacy Collaborative is having the opportunity to collaborate with my colleagues. Each of us has our strengths and passions about some aspect of teaching. The trick is finding out what each of our passions is and tapping into them. Through conversations, I found a colleague who wanted to work with teachers in teaching process writing. Her knowledge, guidance, and patience created an immediate trust. She took the time to meet with me and listen to my concerns. Once a week she came into class and modeled lessons and conferencing with children about their writing. I then would practice these explicit teachings. I no longer felt alone on this new adventure and suddenly the thought of change was exciting.

Organization was the first piece we worked on. The folders were a great start, but what other organizational procedures did I need to teach? How was I going to run the workshop? Putting procedures in place created organization. Children learned how to use their folders -- "resting pieces" in the front pocket and "active pieces" in the back pocket. They knew where to find the stapler, paper, and the staple remover. At the beginning of each Writing Workshop session they needed to write the date and at the end they were to put their pages in order and staple them together. These procedures -- consistently reinforced and then new ones gradually added -- helped to create independent writers and sanity for the teacher.

With the organization and procedures in place, we began looking at the samples of each child'ks work. We asked ourselves what these writers needed in the way of instruction about the craft of writing. Ralph Fletcher's book Craft Lessons and Donald Graves's book A Fresh Look at Writing have been extremely helpful resources. I found that to think about what lessons I needed to teach, I had to revisit my beliefs about how children learn to write and how I behave as a writer.

Three of the most powerful features of the workshop are the mini-lessons, conferencing, and sharing. With my beliefs about children and writing in place and the samples of their writing in hand, I found that the lessons and conferences came naturally. Once the procedural mini-lessons were in place, we moved on to what the children needed in the way of instruction. These were some of the issues we explored first: finding a topic, planning our writing, and working with leads. Suddenly these second graders were writing sophisticated pieces. Not every aspect of writing was perfect in each piece, but, if the class was focusing on dialogue in their writing, then that would be where we might see improvement.

When the mini-lesson is finished, the children race off to begin writing. My role in this part of the process is to move around the room and meet with children. Armed with my clipboard, I sit next to a child eager to share their piece and we conference. My colleague and I have created a guideline for what we do in a conference, so I feel confident following that process. When I meet with a child, we may not address the topic that was in the mini-lesson minutes ago. I address what they need and where they are in their story. I may have to reteach how to plan their story or where to put quotation marks. I record on my clipboard what we worked on and move on to another child. I keep a record of who I meet with so I make sure I see every child.

Sharing our work is an important built-in procedure. It sparks ideas and validates our efforts. Some days, a child may be asked to share an excerpt from a piece to demonstrate a teaching point, or they may share their whole story. Another important part of sharing that is very new to me is sharing my own writing. I go through the same process as the children and I model the behaviors I want them to practice. Sharing my writing has been a powerful teaching tool.

Writing is an ongoing process, one that many adults are afraid of. It wasn't a part of my childhood and suddenly there I was in college expected to write. Learning to like writing was difficult to do at eighteen years of age, especially when I had little experience and confidence in it. I watch the children in my classroom and see their joy in writing grow. I think to myself, "These children are light years ahead of me in terms of confidence about their writing."

Writing Workshop provides children with the opportunity to write about what they are passionate about and to learn the craft of writing at the same time. I always thought it would be too much for me to organize and manage. Now, my heart palpitations come from the excited child who proudly shows me a two-page detailed story that he wrote about a fishing trip he took with his dad. This was the same child who for weeks had been working on choosing a topic and trying to tell a story in more than two sentences. For this boy, photo-copying his fishing story and bringing it home to share with his family was his validation. Watching the growth and confidence in writing that has transpired in class has confirmed that my transition into Writer's Workshop was worth it. I always thought Writer's Workshop would be too much for me to organize and manage. But through organization, modeling explicit teaching, and, most importantly, collaboration, I look forward to using Writing Workshop in my classroom from now on.

Cindy Putt teaches second grade at the Thompson School in Arlington, Massachusetts.