The Web of Writing

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The Web of Writing

• USING REFLECTIVE WRITING AS A LITERACY STRATEGY

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Reflective Writing

• Reflective writing a process by which an author
  writes imaginatively about his or her
  experiences, activities, and thoughts, with an
  emphasis in provoking spontaneity and awareness.
• Family Educators stated that they did not know
  how to get their families to write.

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Problem Assessment

• Family Educators often have not been trained to
  properly introduce reflective writing into their
  weekly home visits with families.
• Family Educators are often not yet able to use
  reflective writing as an effective tool for
  teaching reading and writing skills to consumers
  and for learning and documenting the familys
  stages of development.
• Family Educators often have not been trained to
  read and assess reflective writing nor have they
  been taught to see in the reflective writing that
  which will help them become better teachers.
• Most parent and child family members are afraid
  of writing as a skill and afraid to have their
  skill exposed to an audience.

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The Web of Writing

• There is a critical link between reading and
  writing. Writing supports the imagination and is
  a key communication building block, and reading
  models creativity, structure, and expression.
• The term writing refers to a collaborative act
  and process of writing rather than the final
  finished product. There is a salience to the
  process that encourages the use of peer
  educators who can create supportive environments
  and enhance morale.
• The Web of Writing means that Family Educators
  act as mentors, and as models, by writing along
  with the parent, writing along with the child,
  and encouraging the parent to write along with
  the child.
• There is a strong emphasis on writing as an
  everyday act that can be spirited and playful.
  This means that writing in these contexts is
  non-judgmental (it is not a test).

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Writing Workshops

• Support Family Educators by helping them to
  understand how reflective writing can be an
  effective teaching and learning method, and an
  effective assessment tool.
• Workshop methodology allows participants to work
  individually and collaboratively to learn what it
  means to be a writer, what all writers face as
  obstacles to write, and what they need to do to
  make writing a successful part of the learning
  process.

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Practicing Reflective Writing
Tell me about your experience as a Even Start
participant using the following words

• Difficult
• Happy
• Consumer
• Together

• Anger
• Success
• Energy
• Frustration

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Writing Process

• Write in a journal notebook
• Read reflective writing in a journal notebook
• Not graded or judged not a test!
• Respond to reflective writing
• Questions to ask yourself and your writing
  collaborator
• Do not ask questions that can be answered with a
  yes or no.
• Ask how your specific idea, narrative, and/or
  feeling be expanded?
• Ask why did you think and/or feel that?
• Ask how what was written connects to other
  experiences that you have?
• Inspire a consumer to write in a journal notebook
  brainstorming ideas

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Self-Reflection

• How did you feel when you found out that I was
  going to ask you to write?
• Were you afraid that it would be shared? Did
  what you wrote depend on what you knew about your
  potential audience?
• What were the difficulties of writing?

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Some Pointers

• Keep writing simple
• Use different strategies for different writers
• Use brainstorming techniques- outlines, lists,
  words, sentences
• Be playful! Create a safe space.

• Emphasize process over rules (length, content,
  grammar, mechanics)
• Write during the family visit
• Use exercises to elicit writing (Lets
  describe If I were a millionaire

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Expanding the Web of Resources

• Peer Education and Community Partner Volunteers
• Screening issues
• Making Connections training
• Continuous instruction
• Appropriate assessment
• Writing portfolios

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Main Benefits

• Contributes to literacy
• Opportunity to chart the learning progress of the
  consumer
• Reflective writing discovers the author behind
  the writing
• Connect what is happening in the consumers
  private life to his or her public work

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Thank youFamily Educators and Even Start Staff

• Jack D. Harris, Ph.D.
• Local Evaluator, Finger Lakes Even Start