Wondrous Words or Mentoring Ourselves to Writers

1
Wondrous Words orMentoring Ourselves to Writers

• Katie Wood Ray
• Adapted by Rebecca McKay
• Really listen to your students
• Teach in direct response to the writer

2
Our Challenge

• We must write-generate our own curriculum
  examples. Our Writers Notebooks will become one
  of the most important curriculum documents we
  have for the teaching of writing. (What You Know
  by Heart, Ray, p. 35)
• We must try all the text structures. Yes, all 32
  of them in our own writing.
• We must move into looking beyond deep structure
  comprehension and what the text says to how the
  text is written and why the author wrote it that
  way.
• We must look for books now that we can pull off
  the shelf and use to show a child a writing
  move-a move that stands apart from the text
  itself.

3
The Important Difference Between a Readiness
Model and an Inquiry Model

• Teach the writer, not the writing-Calkins (Ray,
  p. 262). Teach in direct response to the writer.
  Dont worry about trying to find the one best
  thing to teach.
• Dont be afraid to teach (Ray, p.253). As Ellin
  says, I put some words in the mouths of those
  babies. Thats okay. Young children may not
  have all the language to tell what their
  thinking.
• Let assessment drive your one on one teaching
  (Ray, p.250).
• I n the readiness model, we are thinking before
  our students write we have to teach them every
  text structure and every literary device-The
  opposite is true-We learn to write by writing-We
  cant pre-teach everything.
• We have to rely on our students to teach each
  other-the classroom is floating with crafting and
  structural ideas-This comes from the writing in
  the air technique.

4
Directly from Ray (p. 234, Wondrous Words)
So the decision-making process is the key
piece..
5
Continued.p. 235
6
Follow the curriculum that weve offered out
into CONFERENCES (Ray, p.251)Students
intentions drive your helping. p. 250

• 1.ASSESSMENT
• Listen to what child is trying to do-ask the
  child do not read the draft first-work with the
  meaning the child is trying to make.
• 2. CURRICULUM
• Think of what you know that might help him/her-
• 3. INSTRUCTION
• Suggest something for him/her to try-

7
Hows it going?

• Conferences are conversations.
• The teachers role in conference is to find out
  from students what work they are doing as writers
  and then teach them how to do the work better.
• The students role in conference has to be taught
  by immersing them in conference conversations and
  by using conversational strategies that support
  their talk. This must be taught!
• Students should have writing mentors or authors
  they utilize to develop their writing.
• The point of a conference is to help our students
  be better writers not to fix up their drafts and
  make them better pieces of writing.
• Groundwork for conferences is laid in
  mini-lessons. Our mini-lessons are based on
  assessment of student need.

8
Teacher planning for conferences

• Where-sit next to students-move to them.Use a
  respectful interested voice Hows it going?
• What-record-keeping forms to help teacher
  remember last conversations.
• Literature-carry poems, memoirs, essays around
  with us as we confer..carry your own writing.
• Post-it notes-write down what you want students
  to try and leave it with student.

9
MENTORS FOR WRITERS

• Read with a writers eye
• Notice how authors craft their writing
• Students try out the craft techniques theyve
  noticed.
• Teachers need a collection of text to use for
  writing mentorship.

10
A Study in Envisioning

• We do this because now students are having to
  make their own decisions about how to structure
  and craft their writing. In years past, teachers
  did this for students.
• What is your seed idea? (Writers Notebook).
  What are going to write about?
• How do you think you might go about writing it?
  Text structure
• For two weeks, look at how many different text
  are written.
• Students envision a range of possibilities for
  how they might write something-They need 6
  different ways.
• To envision means to write in the air or
  think-aloud how the writing could be done.
• Then you pull back from the piece of writing that
  is mentoring the student and talk about what it
  is that the writer is doing and why (Author
  Inquiry Chart).

11
Author Inquiry
 
12
What kind of text

• Text that are image driven rather than plot
  driven-p. 197
• If the story is so interesting, the writer can
  rely on the readers interest in plot development
  to maintain attention
• Text which arent plot driven dont have this
  going for them, however, and that is why you so
  often find them full of very well-crafted text.
• Look for writers writing about very ordinary
  things. If they can make the ordinary
  interesting, they are great writers.

13
What to look for..p.187

• Texts that have background information included
  about how the writer went about writing the text.
• Text in which the concept of the writing is
  interesting or the way the writer went about
  writing the text-the approach to writing-how to
  write something in an interesting way.
• Connected Text that reminds you of other text in
  the way they are written-structure, concept
• Text crafted with interesting structures.
• Text full of crafted ways with words.
• Texts in which writers take risk with language.

14
Envision and the Think-Aloud

• P. 237 You are writing in the air how a writer
  takes something she sees and imagines it as a
  possibility

15
Difference between inquiry and focus lesson p. 233
The Noticing Wondering Chart is effective for
focus lessons.
16
Noticing Wondering
17
Text structure and Ways-with-words

• These are the two areas where you look for mentor
  writers for your students.
• Text structure is a conference technique used
  before the draft begins if possible.
• Ways-with-words are conferences you usually do
  while the piece is being drafted and edited. This
  is a way to make the writing come alive.
• We must lead students in coming to know the
  structural possibilities but also how they might
  be possibilities in their own writing.

18
How many mentor texts do we need?

• Anderson says we only need about 25.
• One text can be used for many different purposes.
• Reread text.
• Cast a wide net-use many sources.
• Excerpts from longer works.
• Use student writing.
• Involve kids in the hunt.
• Ask friends and librarian.
• Write text yourself.

19
32 text structures

• Do we need to know them all?
• The more you know the more help you can give your
  students.
• Use a cheaters guide while you conference.
• Do we need books that exemplify all text
  structures? Yes.
• Do we need to pre-teach all text structures
  before children write?
• NO! NO! NO!

20
Text structure-Circular text

• Have beginnings and endings that match
• Going out the same door you came in
• Many of same words are used to make this match
  with some small change to the ending which shows
  the text has progressed.

21
Text structure-Text with thread backs

• Use a structural technique near their ending that
  threads through many of the details of the text,
  mentioning them again in a very compressed
  fashion, often in a single sentence.

22
Text structure-Seesaw texts

• Sets up a predictable balance of information that
  moves back and forth between chunks that work
  together in some way. The back and forth pieces
  have some kind of relationship, thats the key,
  when you get one side then you know what is
  coming on the other side. Similar sentence
  structures. Whole text, paragraph.

23
Text structure-Framing questions text

• Writers work off a central question at the
  beginning of the text and then make the rest of
  the text a series of responses to that question.
  Often there is some scene that is set up at the
  beginning in which the framing question is
  situated. The main body is written as a
  succession of responses. Repetition of key words
  is in responses.

24
Text structure-conversation text

• No commentary and no narrative. Entire text is a
  conversation. Moves back and forth between two
  characters conversation tells the story.

25
Text embedded with quotations or song lyrics

• Writers will sometimes create an organizing
  thread in a text by embedding quotations or song
  lyrics between sections of text. The embedded
  quotations are connected in some way to the text
  or illuminate the story or idea presented in the
  text.

26
Text embedded with response

• Writers surround the story or the information
  with the characters comments and responses on
  what is happening or being presented in the text.
  The comments are like asides, and they create an
  interactive, parallel text. Essentially, writers
  create a character to read along with you, the
  reader, and converse with you about the text,
  adding perspective.

27
Time flies text

• Writers use one setting or one object as a focal
  point and have a great deal of time pass while
  this focal point remains constant. In other
  words, time moves while place stands still. This
  is used to show changes occurring in the places
  that are brought on by the natural movement and
  changes of time. This is often done by focusing
  on details and keeping them of one kind.The
  writer brings you back again and again to the
  focal point.

28
Text where time is constant, but settings change

• Reverse of time flies text.Writers hold a
  moment or a period of time still, often using a
  repeating line to do so, and move about in
  various locations to see what is happening at
  that specific time in different places. Used to
  show contrasts in place or to show many different
  things happening at the same moment.

29
Narrative poem text

• Structured as a series of separate poems that can
  be read individually, but when they are read
  together they have narrative or expository
  elements that tie them together-characters,
  setting, plot, information. This is a cross-genre
  text structure where poetry is used to write
  memoir, fiction, nonfiction, or any other genre.

30
Thematic poem text

• Written as a series of poems about a single
  topic. Significantly, each of these text is by a
  single poet or in one case, two poets. They are
  not collections of poems by various poets writing
  on the same topic. The reason it is significant
  is that these texts can show writers a way of
  using poetry to write about many aspects of a
  single topic, as a single author.

31
Lyrical fact text

• Writers pay some sort of lyrical tribute to their
  subjects, either through story or poetry or
  beautiful description, and then somewhere in the
  text-often at the end, but sometimes to the side
  or in pictures-facts that support the tribute are
  pulled out and explained, much as they might be
  in an encyclopedia or reference book-address
  nonfiction subjects in compelling ways.

32
Alphabet text

• Used to write nonfiction, fiction, poetry,
  description, memoir.Simple label format to
  sophisticated weaving of letters into sentences
  or longer narrative passages.

33
Vignette text with repeating lines or phrases

• Appears as whole text structure in many short
  text and as a section structure in long text. The
  text moves from vignette to vignette with the
  help of a repeating line or phrase that either
  begins or ends with each vignette. Vignettes may
  be chunks of information, description, or
  narration. The repeating line or phrase is
  generally a statement that captures the
  connection common to all the vignettes.

34
Text fashioned as a series of short memoirs

• Written as short memoirs that can stand alone as
  single narrative units. Characters, setting, plot
  travel across the stories as they are written to
  illuminate a specific life.

35
Journal or diary text

• Structure text around a diary or journal entries.
  May be made up of only entries in journal without
  any parallel text. Entries are usually dated-may
  be titled or sectioned off-A variation is to
  weave journal entries with commentary-creating
  parallel or interactive texts.

36
Letter text

• Might be a single letter, or a series of letters
  either back and forth among two or more
  characters or over time from only one character.
  While maintaining all the genre aspects of letter
  writing, the content of the letter(s) can help
  writers with almost any purpose, from telling a
  fictional story to conveying important
  information in a professional nonfiction article.
  May be embedded in commentary or narration, or
  may stand alone in text.

37
Two-part text-Changing situation

• You feel as if the text clearly has two parts.
  Writers write the first part of the text with the
  content strongly influenced by some situational
  factor, and then in the second part of the text
  that factor changes and everything is another
  way. Used to show some kind of contrast, and it
  is a common paragraph or section structure used
  in longer text. The shift doesnt have to come in
  the middle of the text. It can come at any point.

38
Two-part text-shifting focus or perspective

• With changing situations, there is a clear place
  in the text where the second half of the content
  is contrasted to the first half. The contrast
  comes about not because of a changed situation
  that is part of the narrative, but because the
  writer shifts the focus or perspective and takes
  the reader in another direction. The shift is not
  embedded in a situation in the story-it simply
  happens-Often, writers will bring the two parts
  of the text together in some way in the ending.

39
Story within a story

• Use one story to tell another story or to present
  information, memoir, or description.
• The story has a framing story which generally has
  some sort of trigger in it that moves the text to
  the inside story. Often, the text moves between
  the two stories as characters from the frame
  story interact by commenting on the inside story
  being revealed.

40
Inanimate voice text

• An inanimate character has the speaking role
  that narrates the text. Shift readers attention
  to an unusual, unexpected perspective. Effect is
  surprising-brings to life something that is
  lifeless, something we do not expect to speak.

41
Photo poetry

• Structure a text as a series of poems that
  accompanies photos which interest them. Photos
  are usually connected to a central idea, making
  the collection thematic rather than random.

42
Photo-narratives

• Fashioned to sound like someone is showing the
  reader a photo album and narrating the story of
  each picture.

43
Narratives sequenced by a series of objects,
people or animals

• Structured so tells stories that are sequenced by
  moving through objects, people or animals rather
  than traditional sequencing of many
  narratives-reader expects next part of narrative
  will be connected to the next object, animal, or
  person.

44
Idea text sequenced by a series of objects,
people, animals, or concepts

• Not storytelling narratives so that movement
  through the series of objects, people, animals or
  events doesnt work to tell a single story.
  Information or descriptive texts.

45
Handbook or guide text

• Not really intended as guides-used to tell a
  story or present information. Sections of
  explanations, lists of advice, diagrams on how to
  do things-they are parodies of this genre-using
  it to achieve some other purpose.

46
Cumulative texts

• House that Jack Built text. Complicated
  structurally. Lots of repetition, layers of new
  details to previous ones, each section repeats
  all the previous details. Often turn in middle
  and take layers away. Can convey nonfiction
  matter. Storyline that is cause-effect in nature
  -write for an audience that will not be
  distracted by the excessive repetition.

47
Multi-genre text

• Structured in sections written in different
  genre. In a single text, writers combine sections
  written as letters, journal entries, interview
  transcripts, memoirs, phone conversations,
  homework assignments, encyclopedia entries,
  newspaper articles, refrigerator notes, poems,
  short stories. Reads like a menagerie of writing,
  but together the various genre tell a single
  story or build a single idea.

48
Participation text

• Use a second person you to address readers
  directly and invite them to participate in the
  text. The effect of this is that it makes readers
  feel as if they are experiencing what the
  characters are experiencing.

49
Geographical text

• Borrow geographical structures to help move them
  along.The pieces of the text work together to
  create a story that follows a real map from place
  to place. Often each stop on the map will be
  written in a like way with corresponding details
  and sometimes even similar sentence structures

50
Text that borrow a structure from nature

• Follow some natural structure that exists in the
  universe. Can be chronological in nature, so that
  they help establish time movement in text-days of
  week, months of year, seasons, etc.-not always.
  May borrow stages of a cycle for text structures
  as in Water Dance.

51
Repeated, wrap-around paragraph structure

• A sophisticated text in which a long series of
  paragraphs-sometimes the whole text-is structured
  repeatedly in the same exact way. A beginning or
  ending sentence, the first a statement, the last
  a clarification of that statement, wrap
  themselves around a body of details in the middle
  sentences.