Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird is almost like a collection of quotable lines and interesting conversation starters. She has a way of portraying so much of her personality (voice) in her writing in an utmost honest way. Just as her story starts off, good writing begins with telling the truth. Lamott illustrates this within her own writing page after page. She also has a wonderful knack for creating colorful ways of describing her concepts of good writing.

This is particularly true on page 110-111, where Lamott recalls an old Mel Brooks routine where a psychiatrist tells his patients, "Listen to your broccoli, and your broccoli will tell you how to eat it." She continues to explain how she would retell this to her students to help them reclaim the innosence and freedom of the childhood mind. She asks them to listen real closely to hear the faint voice of their character and listen to what they want to do next, what they want their next adventure to be.



I think this is a very important concept for young writers to be aware of. As students attempt to write a fictional story they often ask you as a teacher, "What should come next?" It is important to encourage them to push their minds further-- to continuely think of more detail and creativity. The idea of "listening to your broccoli" is a cute way for students to visualize this concept. By taking the time to stop and really just think about what the character would want to do or how they would do it, our writing takes on a life of its own. It is at this point that writing turns from well writen to wonderfully illustrated prose.


Lamott's ability to take extremely vague concepts and approach them with very concrete images is the ultimate key to being a good teacher. In this way she is able to effectively show her students how good writing is achieved.

Is Writer's Workshop Appropriate for All-Ages?

I am one of the biggest fanatics when it comes to writing. I believe that students should be allowed to write about whatever they are excited to write about. Does it matter if their story is about last week's awesome soccer game or that one time that they got a high score on their favorite video game? In my opinion, if the writing is well done then the student should have the freedom to choose a topic that interests them. So many young boys dread writing-- or should I say, they dread writing 3 pages about Thanksgiving Dinner, using descriptive writing about smells and textures to put the reader right at the dinning room table. But allow them to write about that amazing hiking trip they went on with their dad over the summer and watch the descriptive text form naturally as their excitement leads them to describe just how awesome the hike was.

Writer's Workshop facilitates this freedom. And for that reason, I am a fan of the general concepts involved in Writer's Workshop. However, I feel that maybe too much freedom is being delt out in the wrong places. The program requests an hour of writing, generally speaking 'free-writing' every day. Then each day, the student is introduce to one new concept to incorporate into their story. One day it is "how to make a list" another day it is a new prewrite style. And this is all good... almost.

My biggest problem with Writer's Workshop is it's massive attempt to unify how writing is taught across the board-- across schools, districts and grades. And here inlies my issue. How should a fifth grader and a kindergartener be learning the same thing? Some writing skills are transferable, like pre-writing styles. Others are simply not. Teaching a kindergarten how to edit their story when they cannot even form complete words just is not helpful. I understand the idea is that they will be intoduced to these concepts early on in their education and become more comfortable using them as their skill progesses, but it seems overdone at times. Kindergarteners who have a very pre-emergent writing level (as in "I went to the park" reads "Wt to t pk") usually cannot recall what their story says a week later (as opposed to when you ask them about it when they are in the middle of writing it). Having them return to a piece they wrote a month ago and asking them to edit it, is really in a sense having them make a carbon copy of a carbon copy. They basically retell a story with less memory and detail as the original, and we as teachers are supposed to tell them that that makes them a better writer?

I like Writer's Workshop, I just wish that it was used as a guideline (like in some schools) rather than a god-sent cirriculum like the schools I have been in. It has very good concepts that can be (and should be) easily adapted the proper age group. All in all, I wish districts would trust their teachers enough to offer them the tools and allow them to use them to their discretion.

Ideas in Kindergarten

Reading in kindergarten was always a bit of a mystery to me. Some kids come in able to breeze through story books, while others are struggling to learn a handful of letters. I feel like the reading achievement gap is most extreme among all students during this first year of school. You have the handful of kids that spent a year or 2 in a highly academic preschool, others who have spent their whole lives in daycares. Some have a stay at home mom or dad who reads with them daily, others spent their early years running through sprinklers rather than reading books. There is not really any way to tell where a student will be at academically either. It's their first year in school-- no records, tips and samples sent up from last year's teacher, and no way to prepare for the new year's class.

When I first walked into my kindergarten classroom in Ballard, I didn't quite realize this spectrum of learning. I assumed everyone read, all at slightly different levels but all able to get by. When one little boy asked me what color he was supposed to color in the number pattern, I instinctly told him to read the directions. He looked at me like I was dumber than a doornail and stated so incredibly matter of a factly, "I can't read!" I had never worked with someone who was in elementary school and incable of reading (either English or their native tongue). So I decided I must focus in on some of my teachers literacy teaching techniques.

I noticed that she often color codes things and draws little sketches next to very simply written instructions. For other things that students don't necessarily need to be able to read, like the daily announcements, she will write them out and read them aloud with her finger tracing over the words. This way, students with some letter and word recognization skills will be able to become familiar with more words. At the same time, students with little or no reading skills are not left in the dark and recieve the same message in addition to word recognization practice (depsite the lack of comprehension).

When she reads stories, she chooses a mix of simple story books and longer, more detailed stories-- some with beautiful illustrations, others with minimal doodles. When she reads simple books, she traces the words with her finger. More difficult books she will often model "good reading" pausing to show the pictures after she reads the page. I think that it is important for her to keep a variety so that kids do not get bored, either for lack of understanding or becuase the material is too easy.

These are simple strategies that are easy to incorporate into any classroom, but I feel like it is necessary to intentially spot them out to ensure that students at all levels of the literacy spectrum are provided with an education fit for them.

What to do with the next Dr. Seuss in your classroom?

There are two ways to teach writing: teach the skills and allow it to lead to good writing, or teach how to be a good writer and add in the specific skills along the way. In my opinion, the second option is much more valuable. It is easy to teach a student how to create a proper sentance and correctly place a coma. It is much more of a challenge to analyize how a good writer writes and how a student can grow into such a writer.

The 12 Writing Essentials allow teachers to embrace this idea, and allow students to develope their style and skill simualtaneously. The 12 Essentials are important becuase they can be used across the grades. The ideals and practices are transfered from year to year, only the skills taught are more advanced as the students move from grade to grade.

Some of the Essentials are basic and easily teachable. Writing for a specific reader and meaningful purpose (1) is basic enough to teach at the primary ages and quite necessary for any piece of writing. Determining an appropriate topic (2) is impossible to avoid when starting a piece, but it is important to specifically walk students through this essential part. Presenting ideas in a clear and logical way (3) is the meat and guts of teaching writing. It is so, so important for a teacher to give students a variety of tools to help them organize their writing. Other Essentials are just as vital and more or less easily taught, like elaborating on ideas (4), embracing language (5), engaging leads (7), satisfying endings (8), and correct conventions and form (10).

Other Essentials are less simple to teach. Crafting an authentic voice (6) is probably the most important aspect of good writing-- and the hardest to teach. How do you even begin to teach such a huge topic of individuality and style? You cannot teach someone to be creative and true to themselves. You can give them the tools to find their own creativity and provide an enviornment that is safe for them to explore their voice and stye, but it is still a very abstract idea to teach. On top of that, it is even more difficult to teach voice to a student who is just emerging as a writer. Where do you draw the line between voice and inproper grammer and/or poor writing. Is Hunter S. Thompson a good writer with an excellently authentic voice, or is he a poor writer who throws all regards to grammer out the window? How about Dr. Suess and his dictionary of made up words? In these cases, I think it is in the eye of the beholder. Do you stop the next Hunter or Seuss by emphasizing proper sentance structure and correct spelling, or do you let style and voice develope and blossom?

My family made me who I am today, take it or leave it.

Lately I have been getting a lot of flack from some of the higher up people in the program regarding 'my look', 'my character' and 'my lifestyle'. It sucks that I am being judged by people who have met me a small handful of times who feel they are qualified to give my professional co-workers a "warning" about me before I even meet them. What is all this fancy talk about the importance of first impressions if I already come with a 'warning label'.

And for that matter, who the hell cares if I don't fit the mold of the typical sweater-wearing elementary school teacher? I am respectful, responsible and appropriate in the professional world. I have had different experiences that will allow me to be more open minded and better able to help students that may fall through the cracks of a 'typical' classroom. This is my family and a large part of who I am today. Without my family I would not be here today. I would not care to make a difference and I would not have the passion to be a teacher. So to that one particular person (*cough cough* Jon Howilier *cough*), fuck off. Or for the kid's, "He is a meany pants and made me feel sad!"

Enventv Speling: a good idea?

I am quite possibly the biggest fan of inventive spelling. Growing up, I was always a terrible speller (and to be honest, I haven't improved much). I always felt so defeated each and every time I was marked down for incorrect spelling. I knew what I was trying to say, and obviously if the teacher knew enough to show me the right way to spell the word with her evil red pen, then she knew what I was trying to say as well.

As I enter the classroom from the other viewpoint, I love to see children exploring with their language. Watching a child "streeeeeetch out" a word they don't know how to spell or sound out "kaa ahh teh" is seriously so amazing. You can see their brains working, like the wheels are literally turning inside their heads. You can see the letter sound recognition going through their minds. Sometimes they don't have the original pronunciation of the word correct from the get-go and it muddles up their phonemic spelling just a bit. But, at the end of their story, you can understand what they are trying to communicate to you. And if you can't decode it? Just ask! "Hey Jimmy, you're story looks amazing. Do you want to read it to me?" I have yet to meet a kid that was not stoked to tell a story. Listening to their re-telling let's you as a teacher deciefer just how close all those "scribbles" were to the "real" words that they represent.

As much as I champion inventive spelling for students (and adults, as far as I am concerned), I do find it entirely too difficult to tell a student that they spelt something "right" when it is phonetically correct but illiterate to the English language. When my second graders spell out went as "wnt", they GOT all the right letter sounds. How are they supposed to know that went has an 'e' in it when all you hear is the "weh weh + nnnnn + teh teh"? It sounds like a W+N+T to me and if I was socially and professionally allowed to spell it that way I would. Yet the teacher in me feels like I am doing students an injustice by nodding in agreement to a word sounded out so perfectly, yet spelt so incorrectly. I still think that inventice spelling belongs in the elementary schools, but I would just like a little more detail on how and when to start introducing the "correct" spelling of words in the eyes of society. I mean, you just cannot get very far with a resume that says "2 yeers xperiants". 

Literacy in Kindergarten

Emergent literacy in kindergarten is an very unique experience. This is the only year in elementary where students are not expected to already know how to read. Imagine that-- in just nine months a kindergarten teacher is expected to take a non-reader and transform them into an emergent reader. Pressure? You bet!

I was terrified to even touch the subject of literacy. It is such a vital component to all other aspects of education. Although it's only been two days so far, sitting in the classroom has converted my fear in two big ways. Each lesson is very, very simple and focuses very clearly on one small thing. Yet, my teacher said specifically that it is that very concept that makes teaching literacy so difficult. She explained to me how trying to peice every little skill together can only work if you are constantly thinking about 100 at a time when teaching any literacy.

The Emergent Literacy (Mason) chapter on kindergarten literacy sheds light on how multi-faceted the subject truely is. Although I do approach different books with different ways of reading and interpreting the story, I don't think I would have ever noticed it had it not been pointed out to me. I hadn't thought that my teaching style would and should change according to what type of book I was reading. I very much do enjoy being forced to look at different genres of books, and the 'cheat sheet' charts are incredibley useful.