Community+of+Writers+Highlights

Shannon Blady

Summary of //A Community of Writers (//1988) by Steven Zemelman and Harvey Daniels

I've only included chapters 1 and 14 as they related to Marilyn's presentation.

Process paradigm includes:
 * Chapter 1 The Challenge **

1. Teachers understand linguistic competence kids bring to school and set positive expectations 2. Regular and substantial practice 3. Instruction in phases of writing- prewrite, draft, revise 4. Real, personally significant purposes to write 5. wide range of audiences 6. Reading opportunities 7. models from peers and skilled adult writers 8. collaborative activities that provide ideas for writing and guidance in revising drafts in progress 9. individual writing conferences with teacher 10. inquiry-oriented classrooms (rich sets of data and social interaction) 11. Lots of sentence-combining activities <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">12. mechanics taught in context of their own compositions <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">13. moderate marking of structure errors <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">14. flexible and cumulative evaluation of writing that stresses revision <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">15. Writing as tool for learning across content areas

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Middle and high school teachers may have a harder time with the process method because so many students (evaluating 150 papers) and not much time. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Harder to establish personal connections

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Grouping issues: 3-4 per group, friends can work together, keep groups together for a while to build relationships. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">They need to meet regularly <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Modeling
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Chapter 14 Peer Writing Groups **

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Kids need frameworks to help partners with their pieces: Here’s my idea for a sheet elementary students/teachers can use for conferencing/ peer group discussions. //<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">What part did you really like; What part is confusing to you? What part do you encourage the writer to expand on, add to? What do you want to know more about? //

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">For constructive interactions, help students use an I message. Instead of...//Here’s how you must change it//, say //<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Here’s how it strikes me. //

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">For effective revision, need modeling and plenty of practice. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Teacher interventions: comment on good practices to reinforce them, encourage problem solving, not breaking up groups, remind them that you’re observing their processes as writers, this may help them become more meta-cognitive about their processes.