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!