[Notes from a session with Lucy Calkins, Carl Anderson, and Katie Clements]
Lucy:
Writing as a Tool for Lifting the Level of Reading
- Imagine a giant net that collects all the writing about reading kids are doing in school. If asked to sort for kids’ reading and bad for kids’ reading. How much would go in each pile?
- Kids need to read. They need to read more.
Why isn’t writing about reading helping?
Is the writing about reading taking up time for reading?
Kids need to, above all, love reading.
Example article:
After reading this, does it seem appropriate to find text evidence and place it in a T-chart?
Nobody in this room would want to write a summary after each chapter of a book they read.
There should be much less writing about reading, not more.
The writing that occurs during reading must have magical power to lift the level of reading.
There are a lot of things we know to help make writing better. Yet, most of this doesn’t occur in writing about reading (WAR). Like writing workshop, WAR should also include:
- Choice
- Mentor text
- Growth over time
- Feedback
- Explicit instruction
- Revision
- Opportunities for publication
Draw on what we know about teaching writing
Teach the writer, not the writing
We teacher writerly consciousness (noticing something in the park and writing about it).
As readers, they should be able to do the same thing.
“Reading is not longer reading if you control my mind as I read. Kids should make their own meanings.” - Lucy Calkins
Choice Matters.
What should it be like?
- Give clear images of good work.
- “Writing to think” is more like a good book talk.
- Explicitly teach qualities of good writing about reading.
- Think about the writing/talking you do when you have something in you for which it isn’t easy to find the right words. Writing about reading is thinking: We want to reach the precision of language that represents something that doesn’t fit easily into language.
- Think about parts in relationship to the whole. Character traits with theme; Theme with setting; etc.
- Give kids models of good writing about reading. Admire them. Annotate them. What do you notice?
- Then have students look at their writing about reading. Annotate them. What do you notice?
- Bring what we do in writing workshop into the reading workshop.
Katie Clements:
We need to give kids more work with logical thinking. The fastest way to do this is through talk. If we coach into their talk, we can support this work early on in a unit of study.
To grow meaningful ideas….
→ Read with a writerly wide awakeness, noticing details others pass by
→ Study times when characters face trouble
How might we describe the main characters?
- Determined
- Joyful
- Kind
- Resilient
Can you make your claim more nuanced?
When kids only know a little bit about a topic, they will share an idea, then give details about that idea. (Saying “because” when they really mean “for example”).
They need to start to think bigger.
Best writing (and writing about reading) go back and forth between tiny details and big ideas and themes.
Support Your Thesis:
- Reasons why
- Times when
- Ways your idea could be true
- Craft moves
- Characters
- I used to think… but now I think…
Try out your reasons and evidence in a different order. Think about the power of sequence.
Explain why these details are significant. How do they support your ideas?
-These details are significant because…
Carl Anderson:
Mentor Texts that Show Students How to Instill Beauty When They Write About Reading
@conferringcarl
Inquiry: What does it mean to write beautifully and passionately about reading?
Criteria:
- Texts written by gifted writers
- Texts published in places that are known to value beautiful writing and people actually read (Ex: The New Yorker)
- Texts that are genuinely ones i want to read
- That inspire me to write about reading
Example of a beautiful Literary Essay:
What he found:
1. Literacy essay writers are very present in the text.
1. Literacy essay writers are very present in the text.
2. The writer makes meaning both by referring to the text, but also to her own personal experience and knowledge.
3. Like writers of memoir or literary non-fiction, writers who write about reading craft their writing in beautiful ways.
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