St Francis Canossian Primary School

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St Francis Canossian Primary School
Putting thoughts on paper the what, how and
why in Process Writing
2006 -2008
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You might think

• With good-looking kids with blue-barrette
  pony tails, affluent parents who could afford to
  have their children tutored if they couldnt
  catch up in school, what else needs to be done?

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School background

• A well-established primary school
• An all-girls school
• Students are not, on the whole, fluent and
  confident English language speakers and writers
• In writing, most of them show a heavy reliance on
  prescribed questions
• Students have not much room for self-expression.

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Looking into the routines

• Lessons followed the typical pattern -
  teacher-led introduction to the topic including
  vocabulary and grammatical structures needed to
  complete the task
• Students wrote their compositions within a time
  limit and passed them to the teachers for
  correction and comments

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• Questions were provided, which meant that
  students were very restricted in terms of
  possible responses to the task (in fact, many of
  the students compositions produced from these
  outputs were extremely similar to one another
  penmanship?)
• Focus on students products as displays of
  language rather than on the process of writing in
  teaching

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What that leads to is

• students withholding personal views as they
  very much want to write accurately the language
  rather than spending time on ideas development

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And what this might lead to further is

• affect students motivation to write because of
  the limited strategies

What we believe is

• Teachers can work actively to improve students
  motivation provided there are ways
• (Dornyei, 2001, 2003)

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The beginning
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• Some considerations
• External factors
• Socio-cultural and contextual background of the
  learners
• Internal factors
• Individual learners - learners attitude towards
  the activities, its intrinsic interests, and the
  value and relevance of the activities

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• Noels (2001)
• Three psychological needs to be met in order to
  enhance motivation
• 1. Sense of competency achieved through seeking
  out and overcoming challenges
• 2. Autonomy
• 3. Relatedness - being connected to and esteemed
  by others belonging to a larger social whole

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The new approach involves

• Make strong connections between writing and the
  students own experiences, while encouraging
  sharing between teacher and students and among
  the students themselves
• introducing and exploring it with the students
  through class discussion and through sharing
  their own ideas
• Help them get a sense that this was a
  collaborative endeavor
• Technically, forming sentences, paragraphing,
  grouping and sequencing original ideas a step
  by step process

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Some necessary details

• Main participants
• 4 classes of P3
• 4 classes of P4
• Aged between 8-9 yrs
• Time spanned over one and a half years
• The writing lessons are planned according to
  modules, taking into consideration of the text
  types learned or to be learned

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• Student interviews were conducted in Cantonese,
  these ranged from about 15-20 minutes each
• The interviews focused on students feelings
  about writing in general and their perceptions
  and preferences regarding the topics and
  procedures used during the course of writing

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Before going deeper, here is a reminder

• This sharing session is NOT intended to be very
  instructional
• Instead, we will explore the writing process and
  its essentials, which hopefully, you could apply
  to any writing courses

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Lets look at the plan this morning

• the what, how and why in process writing
• the importance of feedback
• students voice
• looking at students work
• development of students writing between
  2006-2008
• implications and conclusions

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A light dose of literature here
Process writing what, how, why
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The changing roles of teacher and students

• The teacher needs to move away from being a
  marker to a reader, responding to the content of
  student writing more than the form.

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• Research also shows that
• feedback is more useful between drafts, not
  when it is done at the end of the task after the
  students hand in their composition to be marked.
• Corrections written on compositions returned to
  the student after the process has finished seem
  to do little to improve student writing.

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• Students also need to realize what they put down
  on paper can be changed Things can be deleted,
  added, restructured, reorganized, etc.
• They need to develop the habit of self-evaluation
  on what they have written.

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• Four main stages in process writing

• Pre-writing and brainstorming
• Drafting and Focusing ideas
• Revising and editing
• Publishing and sharing

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• Pre-writing and brainstorming

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• St Francis teachers invited students to respond
  to their feedback. This practice ensures that the
  feedback is received by the student, and that it
  is attended to, and that is acted on. This
  practice helps to promote interaction between
  students and teachers and enhance the feedback
  process.

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• Pre-writing and brainstorming

• Elicits ideas from students instead of
  teacher doing all the talking
• The teacher needs to stimulate students'
  creativity, to get them think how to approach a
  writing topic. In this stage, the most important
  thing is the flow of ideas.

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• Drafting and focusing ideas

• On completion of mind mapping exercises,
  students write their first draft.
• Guidance and help are necessary in this stage.
• Students are reassured that the first draft
  will not be perfect.

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• During this stage, students write without much
  attention to the accuracy of their work or the
  organization. The most important feature is
  meaning. Here, the teacher (or other students)
  should concentrate on the content of the writing.
  
• Students ask themselves Is it coherent? Is there
  anything missing? Anything extra?

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Peer edited draft
Final draft for teacher Comment
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• Revising and editing

• It is the significant step that helps
  students reshape their writing. Students can
  correct any mistakes they might have made on such
  technical aspects as grammar, spelling and
  punctuation. They can change some of the ideas in
  their writings. This can be achieved through
  self-editing, peer editing and teacher editing.
  

Therefore, students need to realize that what
they write initially does not necessarily have to
be the final product, but that the form and
content can be modified and improved as they go
along.
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• Publishing and sharing

• At the end of the process, students produce the
• final draft.
• Opportunities are created for students to share
  their
• final products with their classmates.

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Feedback that supports learning

• Students receive feedback from their peers and
  teacher during group discussion.
• The initial feedback and discussion focuses on
  ideas rather than on marks and is provided at a
  time when the ideas are still fresh in students
  minds.
• Lag-time in marking is avoided.

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Feedback that supports learning

• Seeing and critiquing others work heightens
  students awareness of standards and helps
  develop their ability to evaluate their own work.

• Student also gained feedback from a wider range
  of perspectives than just from a teacher,
  allowing them to have a deeper reflection on
  their on-going writing. They are able to monitor
  the quality of their own work when they have
  critiqued the work of others.

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Feedback that supports learning

• During the process, we also found that teacher
  feedback may not necessarily help students learn
  better or produce better work students do not
  often treat teacher feedback seriously and no
  actions for improvement are taken. Some students
  do not understand the feedback they receive.
  However, they seldom initiate to talk to their
  teachers about this.

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Feedback that supports learning

• Oral assessment in the form of class
  presentations makes students work public.
  Hearing others work helps students develop a
  sense of standards that should apply to their own
  work.

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There should be a balance between process writing
(developing composition skills) and independent
writing (e.g. journal writing) in your
school-based curriculum planning!
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The Journal Writing of St Francis Canossian
students from 2006-2008
Im a Little writer!
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Im a Little writer!

• Through Little writer children have the
  opportunity to explore learning, feelings,
  experiences and language.

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Journal writing

• Recent research shows that journal writing allows
  students to express individual thoughts and
  ideas to experiment with language for a reason
  and in a purposeful manner and to develop
  critical and creative thinking skills.

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Journal writing

• However, the way teachers respond to students'
  writing can have a powerful influence on their
  students' writing development.
• When teachers and students emphasize the
  importance of writing mechanics, such as correct
  spelling, capitalization, punctuation, grammar,
  writing can be inhibited.

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Journal writing

• Teachers should make a special effort to be
  encouraging of all student journal entries and
  should avoid vague one-word responses such as
  "great" one or two pointed sentences is more
  effective.

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Journal writing

• In evaluating the program teachers need to
  determine whether their journal writing programs
  have met their instructional goals, and they also
  need to consider what students think about
  journal writing.

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Here is a framework for exploring the possibility
of including a journal writing program in primary
school curriculum

• consider the rationale for the use of journal
  writing
• consider learning goals and objectives that may
  be met through the use of journal writing
• consider procedures for establishing and
  maintaining a dynamic journal writing program
• consider how student growth can be assessed in
  journal writing and
• consider how the effectiveness of journal writing
  can be evaluated.

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The writing development of St Francis Canossian
students from 2006-2008
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• These young writers made spontaneous and quite
  strenuous attempts to relate all writing topics
  to their past and future life experiences
• Another positive features of the students
  reaction to the new writing approach was that
  they saw more opportunities to voice their own
  thoughts and feelings

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Potential problems

• necessary to provide a supportive environment
  for the students
• be patient
• the activities are varied and the objectives
  clear, then they will usually accept doing so
• in the long term, you and your students will
  start to recognise the value of a process writing
  approach as their written work improves

• Process writing can lead to learner
• frustration because learners need to
• rework on the same material
• spend more time on writing in class

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Implications and conclusions

• This presentation reports on a small-scale study
  in one schools context, lasting for a period of
  only 1.5 years
• Further study might examine student writing
  development over a greater period of time and a
  variety of different contexts
• An ethnographic study for a longer period of time
  could uncover richer details and reveal the
  subtleties of change among students at deeper
  levels

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• Further Reading
• Hedge T. 1988. Writing. Oxford University Press.
• Krashen SD. Writing Research, theory and
  applications. Pergamon Press.
• Kroll B. 1990. Second Language Writing Research
  insights for the classroom. Cambridge University
  Press.
• Raimes A. 1983. Techniques in teaching writing.
• Oxford University Press.
• White R V Arndt. 1991. Process Writing Longman.