“A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.”
I was reminded of this quote as we worked through our recent session on ‘Writers Workshop‘. Not only the global concepts of ‘writers workshop’ (lots of time to write and explore, choice and voice, conferring during and not after the fact…) but what this looked like in the digital world? Our goal was to use Google Docs as an avenue to explore, critically challenge and grow our student writers. The advantage of Google Docs was the availability of anytime, anywhere as well as the collaborative nature of the tool allowing both teacher and student to work, support and revise in real time.
We started with a visual sequence of the writing process to frame our journey and then dug into a couple of “mini lessons” examples (adding detail, voice). Mentor texts used for each were Love You Forever (R. Munsch) and Voices in the Park (A. Browne).
One of the most difficult parts to grapple was the structure of a “mini lesson”. Trying to keep it to 10-15 minutes is a challenge for any teacher. These sessions are meant to be focused on specific elements, allowing for majority of time for actual writing. A good resource that explains this is Day by Day by Ayres and Shubitz.
What I took away – ‘mini lesson’ was focused on a specific target, making it possible to keep to 10-15 minutes, use only specific pages in the mentor text that provided a clear example of the focus. Finally the lesson was teacher-directed so student input was not included (or kept to a minimum) in the mini time period. Students were asked to quickly return to writing in order to practice the skill on their written piece.
Google Apps for Education provides us with a coordinated collaborative environment to further our writing efforts. We were able to easily create IDs/passwords following our blog ID conventions. Another collaborative community was born.
Our little pilot writing project of seven classes across the district is excited to see what will happen to student writers as they engage deeper with the writing process. Our history tells us that when others (even family members) join in the writing conversation, that both the writer and the writing is taken to a different level.
Thanks for this post, Jan. Yes, I am very excited to see how this process will unfold in my 2/3 classroom! I have had a taste of what it might be like at a similar age level with my Odyssey of the Mind team (grade 3/4’s). They have to create an eight minute play that satisfies certain criteria which they present to a panel of judges at a qualifying and provincial tournament.
This year, I loved watching their story evolve and improve each week on Google Docs. They quickly learned how it works; they naturally questioned or shared their thoughts (by adding comments and replying) as they carefully considered the necessity or effectiveness of particular words to tell their story (clarity and word choice). I was very impressed with the amount of respect they showed each other; for example, if certain lines didn’t make enough sense, another member would re-write those lines and then ask the team for feedback on which one improved the clarity of the script AND generally they would ask first before deleting or changing words a fellow teammate wrote. This reminds me to teach my students about etiquette as collaborators in writing using Google Docs along with discussing expectations (non-negotiables, as Jan describes it) as we learned in our last session.
I also love how all six of them have a common goal to read and re-read the script over and over again to improve the storyline and to make sure it will make sense to an audience that would be watching their play for the first time. The great awareness that they were writing for an audience (the judges, in particular) directly guided their sense of story flow, organization of ideas, clarity, word choice, use of voice and style (like including anchor lines, humour, rhyming, dancing and team-created songs). I need to remind my students to think about purpose and who their audience is as they write.
As a coach, I am able to easily review newly added comments and ask more questions that guide them to reflect on improving their script in order to receive the most points possible for each element of their story. This piece is an important reminder to provide a clear set of criteria like a rubric (whether class-generated or teacher-created) so that the students in my class know what they need to do in order to meet or exceed expectations.
One more point about anytime, anywhere in real time. One of the team members went to visit family for two weeks just prior to our first tournament date but because our script was available anytime, anywhere, he continued to work on it while he was in Houston and California, thus still contributing to the team even though he was in another country! I love this aspect of Google Docs because it allows my students to work on their writing at home and with their peers or parents if they so choose.
If anyone has any questions about my experience so far, I’d be happy to share. Please feel free to contact me at Livia.Chan@sd41.bc.ca. I’m really excited and looking forward to learning about everyone’s journey with Google Docs in their classroom too!
Thank you Livia for sharing your journey with us. I believe like you that Google docs allows a flexibility and freedom that is great for writing workshop. Providing clear examples and guidance is honouring students’ desire to be thoughtful individuals (both in their writing and in the way that they treat each other).
I look forward to learning from you and everyone involved in the project.
~Janet