Classroom+Notes

9/9/10 This afternoon during writer's workshop I conferred with a boy who called me over to ask, "Is this good?" of his introduction in a snapshot moment he was working on. He'd been writing for all of 5 minutes. I sat by him and asked, "What do //you// think?" He looked at the five or six lines he'd written and shrugged. I waited. He finally said, "I think I forgot some periods or something." I said, "I'm not real worried about periods right now. What do you think about how well you're telling your story?" He looked at the notebook again, thought for a bit, shrugged again, and said, "I think I need to add more detais." I asked to read the piece and was really taken back by it... in just 5 or 6 lines, he'd drawn a picture of himself speeding into his living room at just 5 or 6 years old and somehow ending up in a bloddy mess which made his poor mother scream. He'd used figurative language in a few different ways, was funny, and very conversational. The how of his accident was yet to come, and that was an intentional choice on his part. I took a minute to name what he'd done and show how much I enjoyed his writing. Then I asked if he could share it with the group during debrief. He seemed shocked and really proud. At debrief we talked about how important it is to share our stories with readers in a clear, detailed, full way and that we really need to get our ideas down first before we start thinking we've already screwed up punctuation! This seemed like a really meaningful moment for this kid... where did he learn to look at writing like its just a bunch of punctuation rules that he doesn't know or isn't privy to. Why did he think he hadn't added details when he so clearly had? And how will I teach kids to look a their writing with a true author's eye, critiquing it for what truly makes writing good, rather than figuring only their teacher holds the key to what "good" writing is?