Chapter 4: The Final Frontier

I taught my girls how to edit their writing after they were done with the final draft. It was my hope, through a couple different methods that they would take their sentences and do some major revisions and vastly improve their drafts.

I taught:
* a lesson on lead-in sentences to grab the readers attention.
* a lesson on growing your sentences in the beginning, middle, and end.
* a lesson on basic revising/editing of their writing.

I tried to touch on each lesson in the times that we had together. I took 10-15 each to present the information. I spent 10-15 minutes practicing the lesson in small groups. I worked with them to individually revise their piece of writing.

I gave them generic sentences to practice on to begin. I think in retrospect I should have concentrated more on using their own writing, and not generic sentences. Though, really, when I look at the worksheets, they worked harder on the generic ones than they did their own. I think they really thought they didn't need to fix theirs. Perhaps a little too much ownership.

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As a result, I didn't feel like I really had much success with this project. I didn't feel like my objective was met. It could be attributed to the fact that we didn't have a whole lot of time. It could be that I wasn't really their "teacher" and they didn't really feel like they had to work that hard. I'm not sure what happened. I'm not happy with the results though. I did manage to get them published, I think we could have done better. WIth the publishing, perhaps revisiting this would make it easier and they'd be more willing to follow through as they are now "professional" writers. It was just in last week's newletter, so I haven't heard back much feedback from other students, parents, etc. I look forward to continuing this little writing group and possibly expanding it in the future.

I wasn't very effective. I didn't push them to work harder than they were willing. I think maybe I felt like I didn't have the "power" to do that as I wasn't their classroom teacher and we didn't really have a stake in any of it.

After the first lesson in lead ins, I immediately changed up my next lesson to include 'growing' beginnings, middles, and ends of sentences. This is what I took up in the lesson I highlighted in Chapter 3. I discussed my failings in that already.

I didn't see a change in student's writing and I'm going to attribute this to the fact that we didn't really meet for very long and it wasn't a sustained writing project. There really wasn't time to see any vast difference in the writing. A couple of the girls seemed to "get it" and improved their writing, but for the most part they stayed constant. The writing survey I did at the beginning didn't change at the end. Their really wasn't time. In this, I am disappointed. I think their ATTITUDE changed as writers after they saw themselves published in the newsletter, but I haven't had a chance to see most of them since that has happened.

So really, in all, I don't feel like I was really able to garner any real data or findings from this project. I think it was a little too disconnected for true and relevant data to present itself. I tried to make things as normal as I could under the circumstances and feel I definitely learned things from the experience. I have a different view of how to teach fifth graders. They are not a group I have been working with in the past. That was a learning curve for me. I would definitely frame my lessons a little diffently now due to this knowledge.