Forget endless essays on what you did over your summer vacation or five paragraphs on the most interesting person you ever met or three pages on Romeo and Juliet as star-crossed lovers, complete with five quotes and two footnotes. That isn’t where writing instruction is at in Lake County.
Instead, educators are focusing on writing as communication, on problem solving and on critical-thinking skills, and in school district after school district, they’re rewriting curricula, revamping teaching methods and reorganizing classroom procedures to reflect the new methodology.
Students in Molly Pilson’s 4th-grade classroom at Half Day School in Lincolnshire, for example, are actively involved in the learning process. A lesson on language skills revolves around examples taken from their own essays or from age-appropriate literature, rather than a series of disjointed sentences taken from a traditional workbook.
And instead of doing lengthy, once- or twice-a-week sessions on parts of speech, Pilson organizes the instruction into daily mini-lessons taught in conjunction with writing.
This approach exemplifies the whole language philosophy advocated by many educators. As Roycealee Wood, director of academic affairs for North Chicago Community Unit School District 187, pointed out, whole language encourages interdisciplinary curricula and dismisses the idea that reading and writing can, or should, be taught as isolated subjects.
Pilson observed, “Children respond much better to examples drawn either from their peers’ writing or from actual literature than they do to out-of-context examples. And having an opportunity to use what they’ve learned while it’s still fresh in their minds helps solidify the lesson, helps them to understand why this lesson is important.”
This doesn’t mean that Pilson completely sidesteps traditional methods. Up on her board are a series of reminders, nuggets such as “We know that nouns are name words” and “We use adjectives to describe.” And when it comes to the actual writing process, Pilson uses many time-honored methods. But once again, it’s the presentation and the organization that give the material added impact and facilitate mastery.
Pilson continued, “Good teachers have always taught their students that writing is an involved process. But only rarely were students given an opportunity to experience every step of the process in an organized fashion as they do now.”
Process writing is the formal term for this method, which is currently being implemented virtually countywide.
Social interaction is heavily involved in the pen pal program of Kathleen Deveny of Sprague School (Lincolnshire) and David Noskin of Stevenson High School (Lincolnshire). Their program pairs 2nd graders and high school freshmen with mutually beneficial results.
“Writing is meant to be read,” Deveny pointed out. “And when students write for a specific audience, especially one that’s different from the usual combination of teacher, peers and parents, it really motivates them.” Noskin added, “Freshmen are old enough to serve as mentors and young enough to find the interchange interesting. For example, when it’s their turn to do the writing, they have to adapt their style to a 2nd grader’s vocabulary and comprehension level. It’s a challenge most of them find intriguing.”
The pilot project involved members of Noskin’s sophomore honors English class, but both teachers felt shifting to a standard freshman class would offer even more benefits. “Freshmen are at the bottom of the high school pecking order,” Noskin observed, “and this type of experience gives them a much needed lift. It also accelerates the learning process by giving them a very special reason to be concerned about their writing skills.”
Students receive their pairings at the beginning of the school year. The 2nd graders then visit the high school, interview their partner, and write an essay based on the experience. After they finish studying “To Kill a Mockingbird,” the freshmen send their pen pal a short piece explaining the book, and in January, they visit Sprague. During the first part of the visit, they work on editing one of their 2nd-grade partner’s essays. Socialization, refreshments and an opportunity to make an entry in their host or hostess’ journal fill the remaining time. Return visits, complete with additional editing sessions, conclude the program.
Students on both ends of the pairing are enthusiastic. Freshman Sydney Goodman of Buffalo Grove admitted that writing isn’t one of her favorite things. “But this,” she said, “is different. This gives you an opportunity to help people on a different level.”
Pen pal Debra Siegel of Lincolnshire added, “She’s like a friend to me, and I like when people help me.”
Catherine Thome, coordinator of reading and language arts for the Lake County Educational Service Center, encourages teachers to begin working on writing with kindergarten-age kids.
“Even if the results are little more than scribble,” she noted, “they start getting used to putting their ideas down on paper.”
Barbette Lobellow teaches 1st grade and Reading Recovery (a program designed to help at-risk 1st graders) at Spaulding School in Gurnee. Students in her class regularly work together on developing a sentence using a particular word. They also generate stories verbally, which Lobellow then puts into written form.
Students begin learning how to take a piece from idea to finished product as soon as they’re able to start writing on their own. Pre-writing, or brainstorming, is the first step. Once students have finished jotting down their thoughts and organizing them into a logical sequence, they’re ready to write their first draft. Peer and/or teacher conferencing comes next, followed by a second draft and nuts-and-bolts editing done, in some cases, with the teacher’s help. The final copy is often shared with classmates, further enhancing the concept of writing as a form of communication.
Peer conferencing, even at the 4th-grade level, helps pinpoint trouble spots. To facilitate the process, Pilson provides students with a simple-to-use checklist that requires them to fill in the answers to questions such as, “Here is what my friend learned or liked” and “Here are some questions my friend had.” Suggestions for further improvement (“check to see the piece has a beginning, middle and end,” “substitute vivid verbs for overused ones”) are offered on the flip side.
Eager to increase the one-on-one aspects of the writing program, Pilson has enlisted the help of four writing moms, each of whom volunteers her services one day a week. An initial training session is provided, though on-the-spot assessment determines much of what they do. Lincolnshire resident Etta Marcus said, “Every situation is different, and you have to play it by ear. In general, it’s best to focus on one concept-something like punctuation or verb use-to avoid confusion. But whatever you do, you always take a positive approach; you always point out something that they did particularly well.”
Marty Pearl of Beach Park, an 8th-grade language-arts teacher at Viking School in Gurnee, added, “It’s nice to have everyone feel good, but when they turn in sloppily done work, I tell them it’s not acceptable. They have to know that you expect them to do their best, whatever their level.”
The final step in process writing is called publishing, a term used to describe everything from the production of a neat, handwritten copy of the final draft to the compilation of an illustrated booklet. Children in Kelly Kelley’s 4th-grade class at Bannockburn School dictate their finished pieces to junior high students working in the upper-grade computer center. The hard copies are collected in folders for display at the end-of-the-year author’s party to which parents are invited. Students are asked to read one of their selections aloud, an activity that, according to Kelley, most of them really enjoy. In-class reading materials and life situations provide much of the students’ source material.
Christine Thompson, a 6th-grade language-arts teacher at Gurnee Grade School, explained, “Students jot down ideas as they read, in addition to keeping a daily journal. So when they’re asked to write something, they have lots of ideas to choose from.”
Thompson continued, “Some of the most meaningful assignments are generated by current events. My class was reading a story about a whale when, coincidentally, I came across a newspaper article about a group lobbying San Diego Sea World to secure the release of a whale raised in captivity. The students wrote letters to the people involved and did a story on the incident for the school paper. This was a real case of writing for a purpose, and it was especially meaningful.”
