Entry 9: The Persuasive Genre

This week we focused on the persuasive genre. Persuasive writing intends to convince readers to believe in an idea or opinion. "Persuasion is a part of everyday life" (Tompkins, 2012, p. 252). The persuasive genre is everywhere and is easy to see in our daily lives. We are always being persuaded to buy the newest iPhone or conform to the latest fashion. The persuasive genre group did a great activity with advertisements. We were asked to bring in an advertisement so we could analyze it. I brought in the Subaru print ad below. We were asked to identify the purpose of the advertisement, the targeted audience and which appeal(s) the company was using to persuade you to buy their product. This Subaru Outback Ad used logos, pathos and ethos to appeal a buyer to buy a Subaru. 

This ad communicates that a Subaru Outback is a logical investment (logos), a family vehicle that you can take your kids to school in (pathos) and that Subaru is a safe reliable car company (ethos). I really enjoyed completing this activity and I hope to do it with my future students, I think analyzing advertisements is a great way to get students to notice how much media can persuade them. 

Tompkins (2012) states “persuasion is a part of everyday life” and after our class’s persuasive writing genre workshop I could not agree more. I learned the ways writers can persuade people to do or believe something and/or challenge people to take action. “I Wanna Iguana” by Karen Kaufman Orloff is a great mentor text to introduce persuasive writing to my future 3-5 students. Orloff uses letter writing between Alex and his Mom to work through the pros and cons of getting a pet iguana. Alex really wants one and has to use all 3 appeals to persuade his Mom to let him get one. “I Wanna Iguana” has humorous undertones and bright colored illustrations that I know my future class will love! Tompkins highlights that students should brainstorm a list of examples of persuasion they notice in their families and school when you first introduce the genre (p. 260). “I Wanna Iguana” gives students an example of what persuasion might look like at home. Children definitely know how to pull on heart strings/use the power of persuasion when they want something special on a Wegmans trip. I think it’s important that I show students that persuasion is something they already use and they’re probably really great at it! Tompkins (2012) includes a graphic organizer on page 264 that I plan to use with my future students. It has a place for position, 3 reasons that support the position and then conclusion. I would have my future students pick their "dream pet" after reading I Wanna Iguana in order to write their own "mock" persuasive piece to share with their family. I feel like this will be a fun way for my students to try it out! 

References

Orloff, K. K. (2005). I wanna iguana. Scholastic.

Entry 8: Bless, Address, or Press

In this entry, I want to take a plunge into Holly Luke's Entry #4: Thoughts on Journals. In her entry, she highlights the importance of creating personal and dialogue journals. Tompkins (2012) suggests that teachers use personal journals for students who are English language learners because it helps develop writing fluency. Because journal writing is more informal, ELL students are usually more comfortable engaging in the task over more formal writing assignments (p. 129). I would like to bless Holly for challenging this and stating that we need to do this for all of our students. Holly's quote below really got me thinking about my own experiences as an educator and as a student. 

"I think as teachers, we should always keep an open dialogue between our students, first to get to know our students on a personal level and provide them with a safe space to express their thoughts and feelings to a trusted adult, and second to allow them to practice the craft of writing." 

I am currently a special education teacher in a school for children that struggle behaviorally and emotionally. Forming relationships and building trust is fundamental to their success. I wish I created personal dialogue journals with my students a long time ago. I'm wondering what I might have learned about them if I gave them an opportunity to tell me in writing. Sometimes saying something out loud is way harder than writing it down. The pandemic was rough on everyone but especially rough on our kiddos. We are living in a truly unique and challenging time. Personal journals is a great way for students to write informally about what is going on their lives and can serve as a coping skill later in their adult lives. I know I tend to write and journal more when I'm working through difficult transitions in my life. A teacher taught me how to do that! Her name was Mrs. Parmalee and she was my 2nd grade teacher. She gave us an opportunity to journal about whatever we wanted every morning. She responded to our journals everyday and I remember always being excited to see what Mrs. Parmalee wrote back to me. It was motivating! I always remember that I never had enough time to write her back. I would have written for hours if she let me. She is one of the reasons I am a teacher today! 

I want to press and pose a question about the use of mentor texts to introduce personal dialogue journals to students. Is there a mentor text out there that communicates to students that their journals is a safe place for them to write about their feelings and to ask an adult for help? I would love to start personal dialogue journals with my next batch of kiddos. 

Holly also addresses the use of a Simulated Journal where, "students write entries in simulated journals from the viewpoint of a character or historical viewpoint of a book character or historical personality to deepen their comprehension of the story or the historical period." I think simulated journals is a motivating way for students to engage with a particular text. The more motivated students are by the task, the more writing they are going to produce! I think the use of the mentor text "Dear Peter Rabbit" by Alma Flor Ada would really help students take the perspective of different characters while they write their journals. 

I want to bless the thoughtfulness of Holly throughout her post. It is easy to see that she is a devoted and passionate educator who truly cares for her students. 

Entry 7: The Letter Writing Genre

 
I found a great mentor text "Dear Peter Rabbit" during the letter genre presentation. Every letter within the book represents a different point of view of 2 upcoming events between characters of popular fairytales (Goldilock's Birthday party & Housewarming Parties for the 3 little pigs). Each letter was written in a friendly letter format. I loved this mentor text because it made connections with popular characters from fairy tales in a new way. I could picture and hear each character as I read their letters and as the plot developed. The letter genre presentation, exploration of mentor texts and the personal writing chapter in Tompkins (2012) helped me understand the genre and think about what I would do with my future students. 

I currently work with special education students in a 6:1:1 setting. The digital letter generator resource is definitely something I plan to use in my own classroom. As the letter group highlighted, technology (specifically email) makes it seem that writing a traditional letter will become obsolete. This letter generator proves that technology can be used to help students to learn how to format and write a traditional letter. Students have to select what kind of letter they would like to generate (business or friendly) then the generator walks them through the steps of the letter writing process. Formatting letters is often the hardest thing for students to learn and even more difficult when it comes to word processing their work. Sometimes the formatting process can be a nightmare! Giving students a tool that helps them with formatting and forces them to include all the necessary parts of a letter is incredibly helpful for struggling learners!

I have used the letter genre in my teaching before many moons ago during my student teaching. I started my student teaching journey right here in Rochester at the Victor Primary School. My second placement was in Kumasi, Ghana. I wanted to create a connection between both of my experiences and both sets of students. I had my 3rd grade students write pen pal letters to the Ghanaian students I hadn't met yet. My 3rd graders introduced themselves, wrote about their lives and even included pictures of themselves doing the things they loved. I made dozens of copies of each letter before I left for Ghana just in case I had more than 20 Ghanaian kiddos in my class. I am so glad I did! I had a total of 240 second grade students when I taught at KNUST Basic School in Kumasi. My Ghanaian students each wrote a letter back to my students at Victor Primary. I brought back tons of letters back to Victor for my first kiddos to enjoy! Here's a photo of my kiddos in Ghana writing their responses to their pen pals right here at home! 

Entry 6: Dear Dr. Jones

 Dear Dr. Jones,

I am really enjoying this class so far! I taught ELA during my first few years of teaching and boy do I wish I had this class before I did (this year I am teaching Social Studies and Science due to low numbers of 6th graders in our program). I have enjoyed reading Tompkins (2012). I think it's an easy text to engage with and find myself relating my own experiences as a K-12 learner to the material. I find myself relating to the text in my years in the teacher role as well. I took a Writer's Workshop PD through BOCES quite a few years ago and I didn't realize how much I learned! Tompkins (2012) supports a lot of what I already know about writing but has provided me with a solid framework to reflect upon. I have really liked the genre expert projects so far. I think having student led presentations is a powerful method that encourages learning. We are all teachers and it plays to our strengths. It's been nice having a writing group as well. We have been meeting before class weekly and that has really helped ease my anxiety. 

This school year has been a tough one. I was injured by a student back in October and was out of school for close to a month with a knee injury. I have also been down staff since my classroom para walked out in September. I teach at the Bird/Morgan school where we support students with intense behavioral/emotional disabilities. The amount of violence this year has been absolutely earth shattering for me as a teacher. I am struggling to get through a lesson without calling our support team to help break up physical fights. I have known that I needed to find a different teaching position for quite some time. When I started brainstorming/drafting for my genre pieces project, I really realized that its my time to go. Teacher burnout is real in special education but the amount that I'm feeling is not healthy for me or the students in my class. Exploring my feelings through the writing process helped me realize that. Although it's not a primary learning objective for this class, this class has taught me to choose me and to choose joy. After my realization last week, I have applied to 3 different teaching positions and I have connected with all 3 districts. My first screening interview is actually today after school. Restarting my genre pieces project and focusing on something that makes me happy has made a big difference. I'm excited to see how it develops as I move through the writing process. Thank you so much for encouraging me to change my topic to teaching in Ghana.

This class is not what I expected in terms of how it is set up. I have struggled greatly with the flexibility and independence. This semester I have learned that the amount of structure I need increases especially when I am struggling. At the point in the class, I just need to create structure for myself so I can catch up. I think my own personal struggles as a teacher got in the way of my own organization and my own happiness as I started my journey here at Naz. 

I'm looking forward to turning it around in the next few weeks and showing you who I really am! Thank you for everything you've done for me thus far. Working through the prewriting/drafting phase for my first go at the genre pieces project (teacher burnout) changed my life. It made me realize how much I was struggling in my current teaching role. I'm on the road of change and I have a bounce in my step for the first time in years.

Thank you, thank you, thank you! 

Best,

Ashley Olin

Entry 4: Using mentor texts to introduce genre

 This week, I want to focus on how I will use mentor texts in the future to teach genre. Before introducing each genre, I want to expose my students to a variety of mentor texts so they can inspire and scaffold the genre for young writer's. 

Entry 3: Enhancing writing instruction for future learners

Richard and Hawkes (2006) argue that teachers need to make explicit connections between reading and writing by focusing on components of author’s craft. Focusing in on one strategy across the reading, writing, and letter parts of a lesson helps students link the isolated components of balanced literacy.

As I start to look at my own teaching practices and I am noticing that I have put a larger focus on teaching reading strategies because of how many novel studies I have integrated into the school year. I am a 6^th grade special education teacher in a 6:1:1 setting for students who struggle with emotional/behavioral disabilities. The skills of my students usually differ greatly from one another. This year in my class of 5 students, I have a child reading at a Fountas and Pinnell Level Z equivalent to a high school reading level sitting next to a child who is a level K (Grade 2). In the past, I have gotten very caught up with students responding to literature through writing prompts/questions. As I progress through this class, I know where I will make essential changes to help students become better writers. I will incorporate the six traits of writer’s craft into my instruction. According to Tompkins, the six traits of writer’s craft include ideas, organization, word choice, fluency, conventions, and presentation. Currently I teach ideas and organization well. I read aloud often and offer students an opportunity to engage with different types of text. The mentor texts I select have well developed ideas that demonstrate the trait that I’m focusing on. I also focus a lot on organization and do a lot of work around drawing diagrams (BME structure), collecting effective leads/endings, and paragraph building. These 2 traits are easy to focus on with my students because I have a lot of diversity in terms of skill in my 6^th grade special education classroom. I want to focus more on word choice and fluency with my future students. I am absolutely adopting Tompkin’s (2016) “dollar words” in my classroom. Students need to learn that good writer’s use words effectively. I plan to provide my students with mentor texts where they can explore word choice. Using reading to make themselves better writers. Rickards and Hawes (2006) highlight quite a few minilessons that would have benefited my students in the past. I could have tied in the minilesson “What words or phrases grab your attention?” in my zoo research project. During this project, students researched whether zoos were a good or bad thing. They collected evidence to make a claim and wrote argumentative essays. This specific lesson would have tied in great because their work is meant to be well researched and persuasive. 

References 

Rickards, D. & Hawes, S. (2006).  Connecting reading and writing through author’s craft. The Reading Teacher, 60(4), 370-373.

Entry 2: Digging into my past practices

I can still remember the silence of my 3^rd grade classroom as I looked around the room during Writer’s Workshop. I always had too many ideas or absolutely no idea what to write about. I often needed teacher or peer support during the planning/brainstorming process. I think it was due to my lack of confidence. My elementary school years were very awkward years. The Harry Potter glasses did not help. During my K-12 instruction, I was exposed to Writer’s Workshop Kindergarten thru 8^th grade. Writer’s Workshop seemed to “die off” in my ELA classes by 9^th grade when we started reading Shakespeare. Writer’s Workshop instruction from K-8 always included independent writing, sharing, minilessons, and read alouds. The amount of sharing during Writer’s Workshop decreased as I got older and I really wish that wasn’t the case. The sharing aspect of Writer’s Workshop always helped my confidence in my writing abilities. The focus on celebrating completed writing projects, not on revising the compositions to make them better made all of the difference (Tompkins p. 19).

During my second year of teaching, I sat among my colleagues for a professional development opportunity titled “Lucy Calkin’s Writer’s Workshop.” I remember sitting in this conference and making constant connections with my own K-12 learning experiences. My own childhood experiences in Writer’s Workshop made implementation easier as a teacher. During the PD, we were allocated a budget of $150 to purchase Writer’s Workshop supplies. My school district agreed with Tompkins (2016), arranging a classroom for Writer’s Workshop activities is essential during the implementation process. I purchased an easel and Mr. Sketch scented chart markers so I could create anchor charts for every mini lesson. After creation, I would hang them around the room as a visual resource for students that used to get stuck like me. I also purchased a Writer’s Workshop supply station and indicated that it was for student use only. This wooden countertop shelving unit was the home of their Writer’s Workshop Folders. These folders consisted of 3 pocket folders glued together with 6 pockets. Pockets within the folders were labeled in sequence- prewrite, draft, revise, edit, publish, on hold. I designed folders this way so students could physically move a piece of writing through the writing process. Students were always so proud when they were able to put their first piece into the publish pocket. These folders helped with organization and independence during independent writing time so I could conference with students. Hattie (2009) indicated that feedback as one of the two most effective methods for accelerating learning. With a class of no more than 6 students in my special education classroom, teacher-student conferences were happening often. Each child sat with me a few times a week and it showed in their writing. No “Writer’s Workshop Student Only Supply Station” is complete without some fancy office supplies. Sometimes some special ink gel pens and clickable highlighters is all a student needs to get into the writing process. My favorite addition to my Writer’s Workshop classroom upgrade was the addition of an Author’s chair at the front of my classroom. The antique hand painted chair provided an opportunity for students to share their personal writings and celebrate the writing process with their peers. One thing that my Writer’s Workshop lacked was protected time to write. Caulkins and Ehrenworth (2016) state that an ideal Writer’s Workshop includes 10 minutes of whole class instruction, followed by at least a half hour for writing time, and ending with 5-10 minutes for sharing/goal setting. My ELA block was only 36 minutes and my students often struggled with transitions/disruptive behavior. I had to designate a day for each of those steps.

The next time I implement Writer’s Workshop it will include all of Caulkins and Ehrenworth’s three elements of good writing instruction: protected time to write, choice over their topics, and response from a community of writers.

References

Calkins, L. & Ehrenworth, M. (2016).  Growing extraordinary writers:  Leadership decisions to raise the level of writing across a school and a district.  The Reading Teacher, 70 (1), 7-18.