Leslie
You might just find, as I did, that the longer I wrote, the more comfortable
with the writing and the more honest with myself I became. One other piece of
advice...don't write for an audience. Write as we ask the kids to write...to
keep tracks of your thinking...to question and work out your questions in
private. That helped me let go of the 'teacher voice'...
Jennifer Palmer
Reading Specialist, National Board Certified Teacher
FLES- Lead the discovery, Live the learning, Love the adventure.
"Children grow into the intellectual life around them."
-Vygotsky
From: Leslie Wright
Sent: Wed 7/2/2008 11:10 AM
To: Special Chat List for To Understand: New Horizons in Reading Comprehension
Subject: Re: [Understand] Understand Digest, responses to leslie and melissa
Joy,
I love Anne Lamott. Just finished her Thoughts on Faith 2 book. She's edgy,
but oh so sincere. I wish I had the nerve to write my thoughts as directly
and to the point as she does.
leslie
On 6/28/08, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Whenever I begin to teach the process of writing to my children I share
> this quote from Roald Dahl with them. As he is an author they know and
> love, I think it helps them to know that writing for everyone is a process,
> one that is struggled with even by the best of us.
> DAHL: "It starts always with a tiny little seed of an idea, a little germ,
> and that even doesn't come very easily. You can be mooching around for a
> year or so before you get a good one. When I do get a good one, mind you, I
> quickly write it down so that I won't forget it because it disappears
> otherwise, rather like a dream. But when I get it, I don't dash up here and
> start to write it. I'm very careful. I walk around it and look at it and
> sniff it and then see if I think it will go. Because once you start, you're
> embarked on a year's work, and so it's a big decision. I have no real idea
> of how the book is going to go when I start to write it."
>
> -------------- Original message ----------------------
> From: Joy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > I agree with your observation that writing itself seems to clarify my
> thinking,
> > both in online form and in a notebook, which I've also started doing
> since about
> > February. Isn't it amazing that we are thinking alike!
> >
> > Setting a time each day for writing is actually a strategy suggested by
> Anne
> > Lamott in Bird by Bird. Seems it's part of living the writerly life!
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Joy/NC/4
> >
> > How children learn is as important as what they learn: process and
> content go
> > hand in hand. http://www.responsiveclassroom.org
> >
> >
> > --- On Fri, 6/27/08, Palmer, Jennifer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> > From: Palmer, Jennifer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > Subject: Re: [Understand] Understand Digest, responses to leslie and
> melissa
> > To: "Special Chat List for "To Understand: New Horizons in Reading
> > Comprehension"" <[email protected]>
> > Date: Friday, June 27, 2008, 3:10 PM
> >
> > Leslie
> > I have been keeping just such a "book" several months now...probably
> > since about December. Sometimes the pages are just bulleted ideas that
> come to
> > me. Other pages have quotes from something I have been reading and then
> my
> > reaction to that quote (two column chart). I actually have a few
> > sketches...mostly diagrams and a few email segments from this listserv
> that I
> > particularly wanted to refer back to frequently. I put one of those funky
> > multi-colored pens in my purse and sometimes if I reread my journal and
> have
> > some new thinking to add, I will just write it in a different color on
> the same
> > page.
> >
> > I have found the act of writing, whether it is emails here on the list or
> notes
> > to myself in my journal, really helps me to clarify my thinking, to make
> > connections between ideas, to keep focus on what is important to me.
> Sometimes
> > I don't like how messy some pages look, but I have given myself
> permission
> > to be messy. The only audience is me, after all! (Though I have shown my
> book
> > to my students at the end of the year and they have seen my write in it
> when
> > something occurs to me in class. I saw it as part of modeling the
> intellectual
> > life.) :-)
> >
> > I started journaling by setting a time of day to write...but the more I
> did
> > it, the more it has become a part of my day to day routine. I take it
> with me
> > everywhere, along with my planner and that way it gets used routinely.
> > Good luck...
> > Jenn
> >
> > Jennifer Palmer
> > Reading Specialist, National Board Certified Teacher
> > FLES- Lead the discovery, Live the learning, Love the adventure.
> > Reading furnishes the mind only with the materials of knowledge. It is
> thinking
> > that makes what we read ours. -John Locke
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > From: Leslie Wright
> > Sent: Fri 6/27/2008 2:57 PM
> > To: Special Chat List for To Understand: New Horizons in Reading
> Comprehension
> > Subject: Re: [Understand] Understand Digest, responses to leslie and
> melissa
> >
> >
> > Thanks for your response Bonita.
> > I'd love to get back together as the year goes along. I just picked up my
> > own blank idea book today and forced myself to write it it. I have so
> many
> > ideas but I struggle with validating myself by writing in the journal. I
> > need to give myself permission to write poorly, to jump from topic to
> topic,
> > and to just "not be profound." I'm going to use this book while
> > on vacation
> > next week and record ideas on various topics. I'm resisiting the need to
> > organize it and table-ize it in word. I'll keep you posted.
> > Leslie
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
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> >
> >
> >
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>
>
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