For four weeks in February and March I had the
opportunity to work with a student to help improve his writing. I was able to
put some of what I have been learning about mentoring writers into practice.
Mentoring Student Writers
Overview
Student: Grade 8, Gifted
The student I was paired had English as their
second language, which, did not actually interfere a lot with his writing
skills. Despite this, he felt that his oral communication skills were stronger
than his written skills. So, instead of jumping into his writing right away, I
decided to let him talk about what he had written before I took a look at it.
As is usual for students who aren't confident writers, I found that his writing
was much better then he thought.
I was able to help him ask why he felt his
writing wasn't strong, and discovered it was because he compared it to other
students. This didn't surprise me, so I was able to tell him to to compare his
writing to his peers, because firstly, the only person he should be comparing
his progress in writing to is his own writing. And secondly, that his writing
was good, and that frequently we are much harder on ourselves than we are on
others. I followed that question up by asking him what areas he thought he
could improve in his writing. He mentioned that he wishes he used a larger
variety of words
Day 1
I used the 6+1 traits for good writing during
our initial meeting as I believed it would be the best way for me to evaluate
his skills during the short period of time we had.
My student had traits 1-3 perfectly. His ideas
were sound and the logic behind them was excellent. His writing was
well-organized which reinforced the points he made throughout his essays. I had
brought with me some tools to teach him how to properly structure an essay. But
after reading his first essay, it was very clear that he needed no help in that
area. I was happy to tell him that his writing was good, and that with a bit of
extra editing it would be great. He also had a voice in his writing, even
though there wasn't much room in some of the essays for opinion components, his
voice was stitching all the research material together.
A few things I noticed after my first
read-through of his essay was that his Word Choice and Sentence Fluency could
be improved. I found that though his ideas were well written and organized he
had a lot of repetition in his writing. His vocabulary could get a bit
repetitive and he sometimes would use the same starting words for 3 out of 5
sentences in a paragraph. This is what we worked on during the first session.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Excerpt from his paper: "The first towns were constructed when the first settlers came. The first cities served the purpose of military bases or administrative centres, where the regional government was. The first cities were also places where you could get goods. The first cities were not, however, places for people to live permanently."
This section demonstrates one of the problems he was having with repetition. The information was not correct, and the flow of his thoughts were not a problem. This paragraph connects his points and ideas well with the rest of the essay, the only problem was his repetitive use of the words first and cities.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I
chose not to change his sentences as a read, but instead I talk to him about
the interesting parts of his essay, and what I liked then talked about ways to
draw the readers interest by having varied vocabulary. I directed his attention
to a paragraph that had some of the repetition, walking him through changing
one of the sentence and he took it from there. I was pleased to see how quickly
he was able to change his sentence to add interest to his paper.
Day 2
In the second session we went over a new paper
and I noticed a marked improvement in his language choice. He mentioned that he
had edited this particular paper for the repetition that we discussed the last
time. In his writing, I noticed that he would sometimes phrase sentences awkwardly,
and occasionally switch tenses mid-sentence. I personally struggle with that in
my writing, so I was able to give him some practical solutions to that problem.
I introduced him to a technique that a former English teacher of mine gave me.
I told him to read his paper backwards. Start with the last sentence of the
last paragraph and move upwards. It seems like a strange thing to do, but when
you are looking for problems in sentence structure and grammar I have found
this to be the most effective method. When you are reading and editing your own
work, sometimes your mind fills in correct grammar and terminology because you
know what you're trying to say. You understand how the essay is meant to flow,
however, by reading it backwards you are interrupting the flow and reading each
sentence on its own. Thereby ensuring that each sentence makes sense. Another
strategy I use that I think he would find helpful because he is more proficient
at speaking is to read your writing out loud when editing. Then you are engaging
both your visual and auditory senses to find problem areas. We used these
techniques on this new paper to correct any awkward phrasing or grammar issues
for the rest of the period.
Day 3
It was while we were doing these exercises that
I noticed that he had some incomplete paragraphs. Some of his paragraphs were
complete and well structured while others were too short and incomplete. During
the third session I brought in a couple resources for him to look at regarded
paragraph structures.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Excerpt from student writing:
"There was a widespread belief at the time, which was that alcohol was responsible for many bad things done by people, which likely promoted the movement.
In Canada, the first societies promoting alcohol temperance appeared in 1827, in Montreal, QC and Pictou County, NS. These societies tolerated the use of mild alcoholic beverages, such as beer and wine."
These are two different paragraphs pulled form my student's writing. These two paragraphs could be worked together as one. They are a little too clipped. However, again, this is an example of writing skills. He is not a bad writer, his ideas are sound and in general the organization of his thoughts are excellent. I made sure that when I critiqued his paragraphs that he knew that it was the paragraph structure, not the ideas and writing behind the paragraphs.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
We went through these slides and websites to
look at how to properly structure a paragraph before looking at his writing.
Then using the information we had learned from the slides and websites, we went
to his papers and modified some of his paragraphs. We would start at the
beginning and read his paper out loud (one of the techniques that I introduced
during the previous day) and whenever we came upon a paragraph that was
incomplete (most of the time recognized by him), we would modify it and see how
it could either be expanded or how it would fit into the sentences before or
after.
Day 4
For the final session that we had I wanted to
leave him with something to help him edit his essays in the future. So I
created this graphic to help him edit:
We picked an essay from the ones we had been
working on to be our showpiece from our time working together. We started from
the beginning reading out loud and making changes along the way. I let him take
the reigns only making comments when he missed something from the graphic or
that we had talked about in our sessions. It was this editing process that I
used as my take-away to determine if my time with this student was successful.
It was not possible with only 50 minutes once a week for me to change habits or
alter his writing in a major way. However, it was my goal to get him to the
bottom half of the 6 + 1 traits by the end of our time together. The way that I
felt would be most beneficial for him was not necessarily picking one paper and
making it perfect. Instead we used a variety of his work and we learned out to
spot areas of improvement and even better, we were able to work through them
and make the writing better.
Final Thoughts
My goal during these sessions was not to prop up
one individual paper, but rather to help him find the tools so that he could
edit his writing and make it into a greater piece of writing. Using the graphic
I created as a checklist and the 6+1 traits as an end goal, I watched as he
edited a piece of his writing. I was pleased to see him identifying problem areas
that he was not finding during our first session. He was correcting his
paragraphs, finding tense and word order problems, and changing repetitive
language, sometimes in areas that I didn't even see while he was reading out
loud.
Throughout this experience one thing I was
committed to was ensuring that my identifying problem areas in his writing was
not going to discourage him from continuing to write. So, I always made sure he
knew that the majority of his writing was well done. Even in problem areas there
were many places in his papers that he was not making those mistakes, so I made
sure I pointed out places where he was successful. On the last day he
introduced me to a concept that I had never heard of before and he had a bit of
fun explaining the concept to me. It was a "double positive feedback
loop" he used that terminology very effectively in his essay and it was a
good way to end our sessions.
No comments:
Post a Comment