Sarah's demo caused a lot of wobbling for me. I thought it was really interesting to look at all of these different models. There was a lot of push back to using graphic organizers because they can be so constraining. As I'm looking around the room, all of these organizers take me back to my days in elementary school. We only worked with 5 graphic organizers, but I realize there are so so many organizers for writing, and even though by nature they are constraining there must be some use for them. There must be some reason that they all exist and that for years they have been shared with students.
Our group talked about how these models don't suit us, but they may suit struggling writers. This brought a lot of discussion for the whole group. Lil caused us to all wobble by asking why do we share these (admittedly) constrained organizers with our students who struggle and they never can break a part from the constraints. Should we have students just write out ideas and work out the organization point later? But then the question remains, are these outlines for organization or to generate ideas? Do we use them for both? I think that Sarah's activity was great to show use that graphic organizers may have some use, but we need to figure out what helps us as a writer, which will always vary. I'm a fan of arrows (as seen below), but I know some students may find my scribble confusing. I'm not using my outlining to shape the paper--I'm using it to generate ideas, organization comes naturally for me once I sit down with my ideas to write.
This came after years and years of trying different models. This came after watching teachers do this on their own papers to show their own thinking. This is making me wonder where do activities like this fit into our process.
Thank goodness for Wendy! She's really helping me through this process and thinking about the theory of what we want to see and what our system requires to happen in practice. I think there is a perpetual fight between educational theory and practice and we're all wobbing somewhere in the middle.
All writing is constrained in some way, if only by the syntax of the language. I've been wobbling all day wondering about these same graphic organizer constraints. Are they are starting point or, like Lacy said, a way for her to group her own ideas or make sense of things she is thinking about. Are they heuristics or do they just make things harder? I wonder.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you...I think theory and practice are often fighting each other. Unfortunately, I also think one of them has to be a bit more dominant...and often times it's theory that takes the hit.
ReplyDeleteSoooo true. Sad, but true.
DeleteWhat I felt in your thinking here was something I had been noticing a lot this week....that the more in tuned with our own needs as writers, the better we get how to teach it to kids. Building on that is this piece you also bring up about how what works for you won't necessarily work for your students.....something else that I'm sure you know because of your experiences as a writer yourself. Knowing these things does make teaching writing much more wobbly then, say, if you had convinced yourself that the five paragraph formula was highest form of writing out there. I'm wobbling with you here, too, in just what it means for me to give my students tools but not constraints. Aside from any of the top down stuff that gets pushed on us, I'm wondering if it's even possible.
ReplyDeleteWell said, Erika. I'm learning so much in my wobbling!
ReplyDeleteIt is difficult to know where to start teaching if we do not provide some kind of format. I wonder if anyone ever gets this down to a science...
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