The research continues, but the project is wrapping up. I gave my "professional presentation" at staff meeting Monday, since several people would be out of town next week. The comments were all extremely positive. Not that I really expected different, but it's very intimidating talking to people who have spent many more years and hours with dyslexia about dyslexia. Anyway, I'm hopeful this may turn into an actual component of our tutoring services...which may lead to more hours. *fingers crossed*
Even though the blog is "done" and has been graded, I had to share something that happened with Student 2 yesterday (11-1-12). He came in so excited and shared a story he wrote for an assignment. His class is studying Edgar Allen Poe and he wrote a story similar to "The Cask of Amontillado." Not only was he excited to share it with me, he even said he did prewriting for it. As in, ON HIS OWN WITHOUT SOMEONE MAKING HIM!!!!!! For this student, it's HUGE. This is the student who, on his initial interviews, said he hated writing and never wanted to do it. He has discovered Inspiration, an iPad app that allows students to organize thoughts for writing in a variety of ways. And it's interesting. He also wanted to do his Current Events assignment (and there was no shortage of topics to choose this week) and was showing me several features. He had fun going between outline format and thought web. He had a pretty complete outline with minimal guidance from me and then saved the outline, e-mailed it to himself, and opened it as an editable document to flesh out a finished draft. Needless to say, Inspiration is the latest app I downloaded :)
I may have listed my findings and supported them with data evidence, but how to you explain what happened in that office yesterday? To realize you really have broken through a barrier? Not only have you found effective instructional practices that led to positive student changes, but you've actually managed to make a reluctant writer excited in the process. Chills!
Friday, November 2, 2012
Friday, October 19, 2012
10-18-12 Activities and Reflection Student 2
Field Notes:
Goals: Narratives
*No school (Fall Break)
*Talked about the Transy/UK basketball game coming up, which led to a discussion of sports being played on each of our birthdays tend to be cursed with UK losing on them.
*Saw "narratives" at the top of these notes and got excited
*Said he already knows how to do
*Told him we'd work on the planning/organizing
*Began narrative instruction
*Got off topic as I modeled drawing
*Began pre-writing his own story at 4:58, finished 5:08
*He did the drawings and I wrote his dictated notes
*Stopped to look up hardest substance on earth
*Began working on story on computer (not iPad) at 5:10, finished 5:20
*First, left notes in other room as we went to the office with a computer.
*Spent several minutes looking for a picture to go with his story before he actually started typing
*Actually began typing at 5:13
*Changed several small details from original prewriting
*Had a hunt and peck method of typing--funny since he tries to keep fingers on home row when using the iPad!
*Actually used the spell check to help
*Went back to do title
*Pointed out that the formula actually wants us to do this step first, but it's totally OK to use a "working" title and go back to change it.
*Watched YouTube videos of Minecraft
*Seemed to be his inspiration for the story. I asked if it was and he said no, but his drawings had quite a resemblance and his story had the same characters.
Reflection:
This is the first time I've really deviated from my first student. Obviously no two sessions are exactly alike and this student has had several sessions where I chuck my lesson plan out the window and do what he needs help doing. But he's still followed my first student in terms of activities and as I've refined the instruction, has even caught up. Since this student prefers stories over expository, I figured our time was better spent learning the pre-writing process for narratives. I suspect my third student will prefer narratives as well. Just another reason one-on-one sessions are best for these students. Maybe it's a little more work on my part, but we're not using tons of time working on concepts that 1) the students seem to understand and 2) don't actually interest the student. We've done it, they get it but prefer something else, we move on. Luxury. But hey, he was excited!
Overall, his story was of about the same quality as his non-fiction--short, has the details from pre-writing, but not really expanded upon. But, the story followed a logical order. I suspect some of his short and sweetness is due to the fact that this writing was not for school. I wonder how his short story assignment from forever ago would have gone had he done this method of pre-writing instead of answering written questions. I'm kind of anxious for another short story assignment, just to try it out!
Goals: Narratives
*No school (Fall Break)
*Talked about the Transy/UK basketball game coming up, which led to a discussion of sports being played on each of our birthdays tend to be cursed with UK losing on them.
*Saw "narratives" at the top of these notes and got excited
*Said he already knows how to do
*Told him we'd work on the planning/organizing
*Began narrative instruction
*Got off topic as I modeled drawing
*Began pre-writing his own story at 4:58, finished 5:08
*He did the drawings and I wrote his dictated notes
*Stopped to look up hardest substance on earth
*Began working on story on computer (not iPad) at 5:10, finished 5:20
*First, left notes in other room as we went to the office with a computer.
*Spent several minutes looking for a picture to go with his story before he actually started typing
*Actually began typing at 5:13
*Changed several small details from original prewriting
*Had a hunt and peck method of typing--funny since he tries to keep fingers on home row when using the iPad!
*Actually used the spell check to help
*Went back to do title
*Pointed out that the formula actually wants us to do this step first, but it's totally OK to use a "working" title and go back to change it.
*Watched YouTube videos of Minecraft
*Seemed to be his inspiration for the story. I asked if it was and he said no, but his drawings had quite a resemblance and his story had the same characters.
Reflection:
This is the first time I've really deviated from my first student. Obviously no two sessions are exactly alike and this student has had several sessions where I chuck my lesson plan out the window and do what he needs help doing. But he's still followed my first student in terms of activities and as I've refined the instruction, has even caught up. Since this student prefers stories over expository, I figured our time was better spent learning the pre-writing process for narratives. I suspect my third student will prefer narratives as well. Just another reason one-on-one sessions are best for these students. Maybe it's a little more work on my part, but we're not using tons of time working on concepts that 1) the students seem to understand and 2) don't actually interest the student. We've done it, they get it but prefer something else, we move on. Luxury. But hey, he was excited!
Overall, his story was of about the same quality as his non-fiction--short, has the details from pre-writing, but not really expanded upon. But, the story followed a logical order. I suspect some of his short and sweetness is due to the fact that this writing was not for school. I wonder how his short story assignment from forever ago would have gone had he done this method of pre-writing instead of answering written questions. I'm kind of anxious for another short story assignment, just to try it out!
10-18-12 Activities and Reflection Student 1
Field Notes:
Goals: Thesis Statement
Transitions
"Blue to Jazz it up"
*No school today (Fall Break)
*Reading To Kill a Mockingbird
*Likes it so far.
*Asked lots of questions about main characters and what happens. Favorites are Scout and Atticus
*Likes Atticus' name and likes how much of a tomboy Scout is. Didn't realize Scout was a girl at first.
*Introduced Occasion/Position Statements as Thesis Statements.
*Described 13 ways to write a thesis statement
*Most familiar with #7: lists, and #2: Power numbers.
*Talked about the "There are" traps, especially for Power numbers statements. Avoid using "There are __(Number)___..." Discussed ways to avoid.
*Discussed transitions
*Read several sample paragraphs and circled the transitions. Some were obvious and others were not.
*Gave handout to take home with common transitions
*Talked about teachers and being taught writing
*Didn't like one teacher because she was "boring and did old school handouts and worksheets."
*Has several younger teachers now and thinks they're easier to relate to. Also likes how I'm teaching writing--"It's more interesting." Didn't really press for specifics into what made it more interesting.
Reflections:
He likes it. He really likes it! I'm glad my student is enjoying our time together. For our first session, I was giving a brief overview for what we'd be doing and said we were going to be working on writing. His response was "But I like writing." I said that was great, but even professional writers work to make theirs better, so that's what we would focus on.
We discussed 13 ways to create a thesis (or topic) statement. I'll work on getting a copy of the list our academic therapist gave me posted here. He was most familiar with Number Statements and Lists. Lists are what he's most familiar with from writing five paragraph essays. We talked about the trap of using "There are..." with number statements, so switch it around to use specific nouns and verbs. Instead of "There are four important procedures for new recruits." say, "The new recruits learned four important procedures." He seemed to understand how the latter was a stronger statement. Now I have to work on that myself!
We also worked on transitions. This is something I've noticed often lacks from his writing. He will go from one key point to the next without much warning. He read two similar paragraphs with different transitions and asked him to mark what the thought the transitions were. He easily got the first, next, and finally. We needed to talk through several less obvious ones--"first of all" was easy while "They are also playful" was trickier, simply because it wasn't the first word of the sentence. Either way works and using a variety is always a good idea.
Goals: Thesis Statement
Transitions
"Blue to Jazz it up"
*No school today (Fall Break)
*Reading To Kill a Mockingbird
*Likes it so far.
*Asked lots of questions about main characters and what happens. Favorites are Scout and Atticus
*Likes Atticus' name and likes how much of a tomboy Scout is. Didn't realize Scout was a girl at first.
*Introduced Occasion/Position Statements as Thesis Statements.
*Described 13 ways to write a thesis statement
*Most familiar with #7: lists, and #2: Power numbers.
*Talked about the "There are" traps, especially for Power numbers statements. Avoid using "There are __(Number)___..." Discussed ways to avoid.
*Discussed transitions
*Read several sample paragraphs and circled the transitions. Some were obvious and others were not.
*Gave handout to take home with common transitions
*Talked about teachers and being taught writing
*Didn't like one teacher because she was "boring and did old school handouts and worksheets."
*Has several younger teachers now and thinks they're easier to relate to. Also likes how I'm teaching writing--"It's more interesting." Didn't really press for specifics into what made it more interesting.
Reflections:
He likes it. He really likes it! I'm glad my student is enjoying our time together. For our first session, I was giving a brief overview for what we'd be doing and said we were going to be working on writing. His response was "But I like writing." I said that was great, but even professional writers work to make theirs better, so that's what we would focus on.
We discussed 13 ways to create a thesis (or topic) statement. I'll work on getting a copy of the list our academic therapist gave me posted here. He was most familiar with Number Statements and Lists. Lists are what he's most familiar with from writing five paragraph essays. We talked about the trap of using "There are..." with number statements, so switch it around to use specific nouns and verbs. Instead of "There are four important procedures for new recruits." say, "The new recruits learned four important procedures." He seemed to understand how the latter was a stronger statement. Now I have to work on that myself!
We also worked on transitions. This is something I've noticed often lacks from his writing. He will go from one key point to the next without much warning. He read two similar paragraphs with different transitions and asked him to mark what the thought the transitions were. He easily got the first, next, and finally. We needed to talk through several less obvious ones--"first of all" was easy while "They are also playful" was trickier, simply because it wasn't the first word of the sentence. Either way works and using a variety is always a good idea.
Monday, October 15, 2012
Catch-Up
Not to be confused with ketchup :) No wonder my kids all roll their eyes at me! Anyway, I'm pretty sure last week tried to kill me. Some of my students had Fall Break, some didn't, some went places, some wanted to come early, and some didn't or couldn't. I survived though and they say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Well, I'm probably a body-builder by now!
I'm trying to play catch-up in most things work and school related. I have begun the tedious task or coding my data. Since we miraculously had zero plans this weekend, I was able to get caught up on transcribing my field notes into Mac Pages form, so I could more easily manipulate and organize everything. My writing student tomorrow will be out (going to Disney World and not taking me. How rude!), so I hope to spend that time figuring out how to post samples of my notes.
This project seems to actually be coming together. As I've mentioned, one major theme that has already jumped out at me--without me even looking for it--was the concept of talking. Since I welcomed my writing students to bring assignments from school, I worked through some reading comprehension questions (which I was pleasantly surprised to find were actually pretty deep and thoughtful) with one student. He was was having a terrible time with "why" and "how do you know" questions, but once I got him talking about the story, he quickly wrote thorough answers. I had never read the story he was responding to, so my questions had a little bit of guidance, but mostly were because I had no idea. Clearly, the questions weren't "What color shirt was ________ wearing?"! Another time, this student brought in a writing assignment for a short story. His teacher had provided some guiding questions to help students get started, which my student had answered, but not very thoughtfully. He continued to get stuck after each sentence with what should come next, but once he talked aout what he wanted to happen, all it took from me was a, "Well write that down!" and he realized he already had half the story written!
I keep trying to drive home the idea of the planning/organizing stage of writing--the biggest difference between the traditional writing process and my process. One student seems to have caught on and flown with it. I may actually have to plan some short-essay activities for this week for him. My other students are the type that would rather do it once and be done than to do anything well. That's kind of hard to work with. One has the excuse of limited instruction, since he began late. The other gets the concepts I've been teaching, but I don't think he has as fully bought in. I'm working on him though. I pointed out how quickly he was able to plan/outline and write a paragraph compared to responding to his reading questions. Hopefully a few more sessions like that will drive the point home.
I've also noticed students write more thoroughly and willingly when they get to write on a subject they like. Last week, one student wrote a full page and some on the back about the baseball postseason. My reluctant student writes more willingly when he gets to pick the topic as well. Since we started with "I hate writing. I don't wanna write," a short paragraph about Pusheen the Cat counts as a win!
I'm trying to play catch-up in most things work and school related. I have begun the tedious task or coding my data. Since we miraculously had zero plans this weekend, I was able to get caught up on transcribing my field notes into Mac Pages form, so I could more easily manipulate and organize everything. My writing student tomorrow will be out (going to Disney World and not taking me. How rude!), so I hope to spend that time figuring out how to post samples of my notes.
This project seems to actually be coming together. As I've mentioned, one major theme that has already jumped out at me--without me even looking for it--was the concept of talking. Since I welcomed my writing students to bring assignments from school, I worked through some reading comprehension questions (which I was pleasantly surprised to find were actually pretty deep and thoughtful) with one student. He was was having a terrible time with "why" and "how do you know" questions, but once I got him talking about the story, he quickly wrote thorough answers. I had never read the story he was responding to, so my questions had a little bit of guidance, but mostly were because I had no idea. Clearly, the questions weren't "What color shirt was ________ wearing?"! Another time, this student brought in a writing assignment for a short story. His teacher had provided some guiding questions to help students get started, which my student had answered, but not very thoughtfully. He continued to get stuck after each sentence with what should come next, but once he talked aout what he wanted to happen, all it took from me was a, "Well write that down!" and he realized he already had half the story written!
I keep trying to drive home the idea of the planning/organizing stage of writing--the biggest difference between the traditional writing process and my process. One student seems to have caught on and flown with it. I may actually have to plan some short-essay activities for this week for him. My other students are the type that would rather do it once and be done than to do anything well. That's kind of hard to work with. One has the excuse of limited instruction, since he began late. The other gets the concepts I've been teaching, but I don't think he has as fully bought in. I'm working on him though. I pointed out how quickly he was able to plan/outline and write a paragraph compared to responding to his reading questions. Hopefully a few more sessions like that will drive the point home.
I've also noticed students write more thoroughly and willingly when they get to write on a subject they like. Last week, one student wrote a full page and some on the back about the baseball postseason. My reluctant student writes more willingly when he gets to pick the topic as well. Since we started with "I hate writing. I don't wanna write," a short paragraph about Pusheen the Cat counts as a win!
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
10-9-12 Activities and Reflection Student 3
Goals: Bare Bones
Expand Bare Bones
ARMS and CUPS revising/editing
*Has a paper to write for Spanish. In Spanish.
*Finished with his dad
*Talked about a trip to Transy for sister’s swim team meet.
*Reviewed differences between a phrase and sentence
*Wrote 3 bare bones sentences.
*Took a break to write sight words
*Diagrammed basic sentences, then expanded with adjectives
*Talked through expanding his bare bones sentences, I wrote what he dictated.
*Introduced Traffic Light paragraphs
**Chose not to introduce ARMS and CUPS because we haven’t done much revising yet.
Reflection:
Student 3 really enjoyed the Bare Bones activity this week. I really don't know what the difference was between him and the other two, but he quickly and easily wrote three Bare Bones sentences without much guidance. The others needed me to write one as an example before the idea clicked for them. Maybe the quick review about a phrase versus sentence as well as the two components of a complete sentence (noun and verb)? Either way, he wrote three basic sentences: I ran. Bob burped. and I play.
He also seemed to enjoy expanding those sentences. I had been separating out those two activities, but I think it fits just as well same day. Yesterday provided a good break, since I forgot to review sight words first thing this session. Since this student is also to be "reviewing" things from Barton, I'm also reviewing sight words. His mother expressed concern over his difficulty correctly using homonyms (homophones?) while writing. Since he had finished Barton's lists of sight words, I created my own list of homonyms. I would use the word in a sentence and for me to mark it correct, he had to not only spell the word correctly, he had to spell the correct one. Not a perfect system, but it's the best way for me to see if he really doesn't know or if he may just be rushing. I think he just rushes through his work and decides that part isn't important. Anyway, now I've created several lists of old sight words he had missed the first time through to review and they are actually proving to be quite the challenge. Kind of makes me want to pull out ones he didn't miss just to see if he actually knew them or got lucky the first time (we've switched the way we do sight words...long story).
Since we had the sight word break, I thought going on to expanded sentences would work and he enjoyed that activity as well. I ran became Swiftly, I ran to the store while burping. Bob burped became Bob burped rapidly with his friend, Billy Bob Joe. (a quick lesson in the comma between friend and Billy was needed). Can you tell he's my fifth grader? I play became Quickly, I played basketball outside with Bob 1, Bob 2, Bob 3, Bob 4, and Bob 6, so we could play a lot of games. He explained that he was Bob 5 and wanted to play a lot of games of basketball. I'm pretty confident in saying this is why he enjoyed this activity so much--he got to be silly.
Friday, October 5, 2012
10-4-12 Activities and Reflection Student 2
Field Notes:
Reflection:
This week has been a slight challenge. My student who loves writing, and our sessions, had to miss his session, so I only had my twostinkers less enthused writers. I completed some initial data on one student, since he's just now being added as a writing student. I really wanted him to participate A) because he's actually the inspiration for my project and B) I feel like I'm getting my process refined, since I'm making it up as I go along, so I'd like to see a more "polished" version of my instruction.
I completed an interview with him and one of the questions asked what the student's goals were in improving his or her writing and the dialogue went a little something like this:
"I don't really have anything to improve." -student
"Then why are you coming?" -me
"Because my mom's making me." -student
"Well, she's spending a lot of money to bring you here. Why do you think she's doing that? What do you think SHE might want you to improve." -me
"I dunno." -student (in a laughing it off tone of voice)
Head meets wall. This student is a lot of fun though, I just hope he can take enough of the instruction seriously.
My other student was surprisingly on task today. All of the teachers at his school are going to California for a conference, so he doesn't have school tomorrow (Friday) and consequently did not have homework. While our tutor coordinator has been careful in telling parents these sessions are not specifically "homework help" or homework hour, I do welcome any writing assignments from school to go over together. And this student has come in every week with plenty of assignments! Just none today. Luckily, I had plans written and the fact that he didn't have homework distractions helped a lot. He was actually attentive and responsive and followed directions. The last one is nothing short of a miracle. The only downfall was he didn't bring his iPad (his school is part of an initiative to go paper-less in the upper grades, so he has a school issued iPad), so he discovered the games on mine. I just used that as my bargaining chip :)
He really did do a pretty great job. He doesn't like writing, but I suspect it's the physical act of writing...handwriting. This isn't surprising since many of our students also have dysgraphia, so writing is a difficult and literally painful task. I made him a deal that I would handwrite the outline he dictated if he would do the typing of the paragraph and that got the thumbs up. Once we were all done with the outlining and typing (and he was itching to beat my high score of Fruit Ninja), I pointed out that the outline could also be done on a computer and we spent some time figuring out how to do one on the iPad as well. Pages doesn't have an outline option on the iPad...that we could find. However, we were able to find a rough version of an outline in Google Docs (without the tab key, a true outline isn't possible, but it's close enough). I explained the easy part about making an outline on the computer is that it's easier to expand the thoughts into full sentences and make sure no details are left out. I may have him give that a try next week.
He definitely seemed to grasp the differences between narrative and expository this week. His writing was still a little disjointed--I'm not sure his "key points" were really key points and the "details" didn't always seem to to support the points, but it was at least nonfiction, and he made a pretty good effort with a topic he was actually interested in.
I also made sure to point out the time it took to create an outline and resulting paragraph, which was significantly less than anything he tries to write off the cuff. I'm not sure that has really hit home yet, but I'm working on it!
Goals: Expository vs. narrative
Practice a true expository paragraph
*No homework because there’s no school tomorrow due to teachers’ conference in CA
*Had science and religion tests
*Not sure how he did, but enjoys astronomy
*Plays basketball for Lex Cath 6th grade team.
*Reintroduced traffic light and expository/narrative writing
*Discussed differences
*Began outline at 4:50, finished at 5:07
*Stopped to look up information about elements and read aloud several interesting facts.
*Began typing paragraph at 5:08, finished at 5:13
*Didn’t look at outline, except for conclusion--kept asking what came next.
*Didn’t use capitals or seem to take completely seriously because it wasn’t for school.
*Discussed the benefits of doing an outline
*Outline took 17 minutes and actual writing took 5.
*Looked at formatting outlines on iPad/computer
*iPad Pages does not have outline template, but Google docs does
*Neither has Tab key to move bullets
*Benefit of doing outline online is going through line by line to create sentences within the same document so no information gets left out.
*Assignment next week is to do an outline before beginning writing assignments
*“That’s why I hated my 4th grade teacher--She told us to make an outline, but never told us what it looked like or how to do it!”
*I made sure to point out the elements of our outline: Topic at the top, key points on the left, details on the right and conclusion at the bottom.
Reflection:
This week has been a slight challenge. My student who loves writing, and our sessions, had to miss his session, so I only had my two
I completed an interview with him and one of the questions asked what the student's goals were in improving his or her writing and the dialogue went a little something like this:
"I don't really have anything to improve." -student
"Then why are you coming?" -me
"Because my mom's making me." -student
"Well, she's spending a lot of money to bring you here. Why do you think she's doing that? What do you think SHE might want you to improve." -me
"I dunno." -student (in a laughing it off tone of voice)
Head meets wall. This student is a lot of fun though, I just hope he can take enough of the instruction seriously.
My other student was surprisingly on task today. All of the teachers at his school are going to California for a conference, so he doesn't have school tomorrow (Friday) and consequently did not have homework. While our tutor coordinator has been careful in telling parents these sessions are not specifically "homework help" or homework hour, I do welcome any writing assignments from school to go over together. And this student has come in every week with plenty of assignments! Just none today. Luckily, I had plans written and the fact that he didn't have homework distractions helped a lot. He was actually attentive and responsive and followed directions. The last one is nothing short of a miracle. The only downfall was he didn't bring his iPad (his school is part of an initiative to go paper-less in the upper grades, so he has a school issued iPad), so he discovered the games on mine. I just used that as my bargaining chip :)
He really did do a pretty great job. He doesn't like writing, but I suspect it's the physical act of writing...handwriting. This isn't surprising since many of our students also have dysgraphia, so writing is a difficult and literally painful task. I made him a deal that I would handwrite the outline he dictated if he would do the typing of the paragraph and that got the thumbs up. Once we were all done with the outlining and typing (and he was itching to beat my high score of Fruit Ninja), I pointed out that the outline could also be done on a computer and we spent some time figuring out how to do one on the iPad as well. Pages doesn't have an outline option on the iPad...that we could find. However, we were able to find a rough version of an outline in Google Docs (without the tab key, a true outline isn't possible, but it's close enough). I explained the easy part about making an outline on the computer is that it's easier to expand the thoughts into full sentences and make sure no details are left out. I may have him give that a try next week.
He definitely seemed to grasp the differences between narrative and expository this week. His writing was still a little disjointed--I'm not sure his "key points" were really key points and the "details" didn't always seem to to support the points, but it was at least nonfiction, and he made a pretty good effort with a topic he was actually interested in.
I also made sure to point out the time it took to create an outline and resulting paragraph, which was significantly less than anything he tries to write off the cuff. I'm not sure that has really hit home yet, but I'm working on it!
Friday, September 28, 2012
9-27-12 Activities and Reflection Student 2
Field Notes:
Goals: Traffic light paragraphs
expository vs. narrative
*100 on geography test
*Test in Wordly Wise tomorrow
*Played iPad game to review
*Talked about types of writing
*Then writing process, then traffic light
*Tried to say the final paragraph of his short story did not follow this formula. But that was ok--I explained his story was a different style of writing, so it followed a different formula
*Read example paragraph and color coded--not terribly enthused to color, but was happier when I told him we would be scribbling. Got bored with that eventually, but did do #3 independently--only used vertical lines to mark beginning and end of sentences.
*Worked together to create outline, but final paragraph was a story (narrative). It still works, kind of.
*Began typing paragraph at 5:19, finished 5:25, but accidentally deleted. Had full conclusion written and was very disappointed.
*I pointed out how much less time typing the paragraph took compared to last session where 2 paragraphs took the full hour.
Reflection:
Hmm...This one might give me (more) gray hairs. This particular student has a hard time focusing anyway, so I'm not terribly surprised he lost interest with dissecting the sample paragraphs. He did do well with them, so I think he understands at least. We definitely need some more work in the difference between expository and narrative though. As I said in the field notes, he was initially confused because his prior narrative didn't follow the "formula." I had to point out the differences between his fictional narrative and the nonfiction nature of expository writing. Also, he had difficulty writing his own expository paragraph. Again, his story works...it's just not what I was going for.
Hopefully he at least saw the value in doing prewriting activities. I made sure to point out to him how little time the outline and drafting took compared to a few weeks ago when he had to write a short story and he struggled and struggled to come up with his few paragraphs. He acknowledged how little time it took. I just hope he internalizes it and follows the process himself. That's my main goal for all of my students, whether they're reading or writing--for them to internalize the process so it becomes automatic, especially since so little for these students is automatic. Many will still struggle to some extent, but at least having a strategy they know works is huge.
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