Assignment #10 Chapter Blog

Chapter 3 Writing strategies and skills

In ‘Writing strategies and skills’, Prof. Tompkins divides writers into two categories: novice writers and capable writers. She says that novice writers “…lack knowledge about the writing process and have few strategies and skills available to use while they are writing (Tompkins, 2008, p.55)”.
Then, what kind of things that capable writers are capable to do? She also gives some characteristics of capable writers. According to her, capable writers are capable of considering the purpose of writing and the audience when they write something. They can brainstorm ideas and organize them to develop communication writing. They can use various types of forms for each of different writing genres. Also, they can evaluate themselves’ works and correct them, using proper strategies and skills. Of course these characteristics would enhance results of the writing project.
According to these characteristics, capable writers are prone to organize the ideas and capable of making their works for effective communication. For these effects happen, the writer should be able to see the written works in terms of big context. This means that capable writers can see the whole structure of the work because they know how to use the strategies and skills to construct it. This point can be proven by the author’s statement that “… the most significant difference between capable and less capable writers is their strategy use, it’s essential that children learn about writing strategies (Tompkins, 2008, p.56)”.
Then, she explains writing strategies and skills. She says that we can use skills to do something unconsciously and automatically whereas strategies should be learned precisely. There are some steps of writing strategies given by her: generating, organizing, visualizing, monitoring, playing with language, revising, proofreading, evaluating. Out of these procedures, I think that organizing step is the most important part for novice writers to learn because they don’t have a sense of organized work yet. This is for making a proper structure of the entire work and goes with the entire process of writing to keep the work well-structured.
For the next, she suggests some writing skills which the children can use, and there are six of them; Structuring skills, Mechanical skills, Language skills, Reference skills, Handwriting skills, and computer skills. Among these skills, I think that reference skills are the most important to learn for the children who are novice writers. For a writer, it is very important to comprehend others’ works and interpret the information into their own opinion. Thus, good/capable writers should be able to use outside references properly and easily.

Chapter 6 Letter writing

According to Prof. Tompkins, the two basic forms of letters are friendly letters and business letters. Each of the letter forms has different types of audiences and formations. They are different from each other in terms of content and visual layout. I think that teaching the children how to write a letter is very important and basic part among several type of writing, because writing the letters is the simplest form of writing, especially in case of friendly letters. The contents of friendly letters don’t have to be either academic or serious, and this would make the children feel more comfortable to write something.
Also, learning to write the letters could make the children to think about the ways of dealing with relationship between themselves and other people. I think that the reason why we should teach the children different types of letters is because the children get to learn proper way of talking with someone depending on their relationships. The children get to know that they could be writing more freely with friendly letters because the relationship between the writer and the audience is close, and that they should write in a more formal way when writing business letters because the relationship between the writer and the audience could be not that close as that of friendly letters. Thus, it can be said that learning to write letters in different ways according to the situation would make the children learn how to communicate with other people.
She also introduces the types of letters with specified categories. Friendly Letters are made of pen pal letters, e-mail messages, courtesy letters and letters to authors and illustrators. I think that courtesy letters and letters to authors and illustrators could be in the middle of friendly letters and business letters because they have to be written in more formal way, and the psychological distance between the writer and the reader would be quite far to be really ‘friendly’.
She also talks about simulated letters, and defines it as “Children write simulated letters, in which they assume the identity of a historical or literary figure and write letters from that point of view (Tompkins, 2008, p.136)”. I think that simulated letters would be an interesting task for the children because it requires the children to be creative and imaginative. And it would be a way interesting for the children if they like the literary figure much.
About teaching the children learn to write letters, she suggests the importance of mailing them: “For children to be successful in writing letters, teachers combine instruction about letter writing with authentic opportunities to write and send letters (Tompkins, 2008, p. 138)”. This point would be very important part of teaching the children in writing letters because the author constantly emphasizes the importance of letting the children know that there would be real audiences for their letter works.

Chapter 9 Narrative writing

In the early part of this chapter, Prof. Tompkins mentions that “Children use narrative writing to create both fictitious and true stories that entertain readers (Tompkins, 2008, p.194)”. I think that this definition is interesting because the author said the narratives are written to “entertain” readers. It is important for the readers being entertained by reading the narratives, and that exciting experience from reading would make the readers feel the importance of making enjoyable written works. That is, only the person who knows delightful feeling of interesting narratives can produce interesting narratives: you should be able to understand the nature of reading to write a good piece of work. And this is especially important for the children readers because they are prospective readers and writers for more developed written works in the future when they are grown up.
This point is related to another point which the author talks about the children’s ability of comprehending the stories. She says that even young children have basic sense of what story is. Thus, it can be said that giving the children joyful experience of reading the stories is very important because we cannot ignore unconscious power of the children in perceiving certain stories, even when they do not have ability with literacy yet.
Also, to make the children learners to get the sense of what story is more precisely, she insists necessity of teaching them basic elements of stories. Prof. Tompkins introduces plot, setting, characters, theme, point of view as the basic elements of stories. I think that by learning these concepts the children would be able to expand their ability to understand the world more because literature is a device for reflecting the human world. By analyzing the stories according to those elements, the children might be able to have more critical way of looking at the world.
She goes on to introduce literary device which are used in writing process, but I think this could be a little difficult for the children to use naturally because they are novice writers. Also, Prof. Tompkins talks about exploration activities for teaching the element of story structure, and there are ten of them: Class collaboration retelling of stories, retelling and telling stories, retelling stories in writing, dramatizing stories, drawing story diagrams, comparing versions of stories, creating open-mind portraits, writing dialogue, retelling stories from different point of view. I think that these strategies would be especially helpful for the young children to think creative because these could provide opportunities to twist preexisting ideas from the works for the children. And I think this training could provide the basis for the children to become creative writers.


Chapter 11, Poetry writing

I think that adults are used to analyze poetry from academic perspective rather than purely enjoying reading it. We usually think that we should know a lot of rules when reading and evening writing poetry, but Prof. Tompkins introduces the purpose of poetry writing as “Children write poetry to create images, explore feelings, and entertain (Tompkins, 2008, p.240)”. I think that this definition of poetry’s purpose is perfect for the children because it is very hard for the adults to purely “create images, explore feelings, and entertain” but the children could do that because they are pure enough to feel the poetry as itself without biased image on poetry’s literal devices.
Unlike many of poetry books, she starts introducing forms of poetry mainly according to its content. She doesn’t talk about difficult terms firstly. Basically, she gives genuine examples of poetry which were written by the children, and this was very impressive for me. I’ve been thinking that writing poetry would be too difficult to learn for the children because they wouldn’t understand the nature of poetry well, but it was my prejudice. The examples of poetry of the children were full of colorful expressions, interesting and sometimes profound ideas of the children about the objects. The children are able to express their feelings and thoughts according to the formula forms provided, and I guess that it was possible because those forms seem quite simple and interesting. She suggests several forms of formula poems: “I wish…” Poems, Color Poems, Five-Senses Poems, “If I Were…” Poems, “I Used to…/But Now…” Poems, “…is…” Poems, Preposition Poems, etc. As we can see, the kinds of formula poems are various and it would make the children generate ideas with limited formulas efficiently because those formulas basically give the children the direction of what to write.
Following the formula poems, she introduces Free-Form Poems: Concrete poems, Found poems, Poems for Two Voices, etc. These free forms seem to be higher level for writing, because the children should be more tactical and manipulative when writing these.
Also, she introduces Syllable-and Word-Count Poems which include Haiku, Cinquains, Diamantes. There is Rhymed Verse Poems which include Limericks, Clerihews. She also shows Model Poems which include Apologies, Invitations, Prayers From the Ark, and “If I Were in Charge of the World”. And Poetic Devices are also given following those forms above. Comparison, Alliteration, Onomatopoeia, Repetition and Rhyme are given as poetic devices.

Chapter 12 Persuasive writing

Persuasive writing might be the most difficult writing genre both for teachers and children. Tompkins says that “…researchers have found that children’s persuasive writing abilities develop more slowly than their abilities in any other genre (Applebee, Langer & Mullins, 1986)”. The concept of persuasion in writing could be unfamiliar with the children to understand, and it would also be hard for the teachers to make the young students grasp it. The teachers should develop as easy way as possible to teach the children persuasive writing.
She gives the definition and brief ways of persuasion, and compares it with propaganda. She adds that both persuasion and propaganda have similar purpose but they are different in an ethical way. According to her quote in the book, “To persuade is to win someone over to your viewpoint or cause (Simon, 2005) (Tompkins, 2008, p.267)”. She adds that “Propaganda can be deceptive, hyped, emotion-laden, or one-sided (Tompkins, 2008, p.267)”.
I think that knowing that what is persuasion and propaganda is very difficult even for adults, since propaganda often uses subtle tactics to deceive readers. As she briefly mentions some cases in the book, improperly exaggerated advertisement could be the example of propaganda. We are often being deceived by those advertisements despite the fact that we all know what persuasion is as grown up people.
She also introduces organization of an argument. She says that an argument consists of a beginning, middle, and end. It’s effective and necessary to use cue words such as first, second, and third to make clear layout of the persuasive writing according to the writer’s points. Yet, she admits the fact that making a well-organized persuasive writing is very difficult for the children.
Even though it seems hard to teach persuasive writing to the children, she gives some forms of persuasive writing. There are persuasive posters, persuasive letters and persuasive essays.
Persuasive poster is a type of persuasive writing with drawing and writing. I think that children could learn to write persuasive works by starting with this form, since it doesn’t require a logical composition like the beginning, middle, and the conclusion. Persuasive letters are to persuade real audiences with the writer’s opinion. I guess that persuasive essays require expertise skills the most. I think that it would be more effective to teach persuasive writing to the children with order of persuasive posters-letters-essays.

Assignment #7 Rubric

Assignment #7 Five Rubric Websites that offer samples to assess the kinds of writing genres.

1. Transactional writing
http://www.writinga-z.com/razwritingweb/topic/tools/beginning-fluent/rubrics/genres_text+types/transactional?id=134z.com/razwritingweb/topic/tools/beginning-fluent/rubrics/genres_text+types/transactional?id=134

2. Expository writing

http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php?screen=ShowRubric&rubric_id=1340960&

3. Narrative writing
http://www.writinga-z.com/razwritingweb/topic/tools/beginning-fluent/rubrics/genres_text+types/narrative?id=132

4. Descriptive writing
http://www.writinga-z.com/razwritingweb/topic/tools/beginning-fluent/rubrics/genres_text+types/expository?id=131



5. Creative writing

htttp://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php?screen=ShowRubric&rubric_id=1777559&

Assignment #6 Book Review

Summary

This is not a grammar book (though there is an appendix that gives an overview of English grammar). It is a book designed to improve your writing. It helps you make solid decisions about sentence structure, placing punctuation, and choosing the right words. This book can help guide you through some of the thorniest and most subjective aspects of writing English.
The product of author’s years as a copy editor for the Modern Language Association (every writer should also own the MLA Handbook) Claire Cook's "Line by Line: How to Edit Your Own Writing," is not for the faint-hearted, nor is it for those who have yet to memorize "the little book" by Strunk and White. Even an English major and MFA holder who has written for newspapers, magazines, and literary journals will benefit greatly, and improve his or her chances of publication, by "eliminating the stylistic faults that most often impede reading and obscure meaning." A straightforward, five-chapter sequence addresses overwritten sentences, bad transitions, "mismanaged" references, problems with punctuation (at the advanced level), and other mistakes that doom writing, whether you're attempting to fine-tune a newsletter, a scholarly paper, a business proposal, or a short story.
One of the neatest things about this book is that, in addition to the copious examples, the text itself serves as an example of excellent writing. Perhaps the major drawback is that after reading this book, you will end up being much more critical of the writing you encounter!

Description of Chapters
Chapter 1 Introduction : On looking at sentences, loose, baggy sentences.
Chapter 2 Faulty connections.
Chapter 3 Ill-matched partners.
Chapter 4 Mismanaged numbers and references.
Chapter 5 Problems with punctuation.

Reference
Cook, C. K. (1985). Line by Line : How to Edit Your Own Writing. Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Assignment #4 Academic assignment

Course type: English language institute for elementary students program
Grade level: 2nd - 3th grade in EFL
ELD level: Intermediate ELD level

Objectives:
1. Student will be able to make a list of items related to life in the country and what they know.
2. Student will be able to break a list in different categories and consolidate.
3. Student will write narrative essays and present in front of all class.

ESL Standards:
Goal 1: To use English to communicate in social settings
Standard 2: Students will interact in, through, and with spoken and written English for personal expression and enjoyment.
Standard 3: Students will use learning strategies to extend their communicative competence.
Goal 2: To use English to achieve academically in all content areas
Standard 1: Students will use English to interact in the classroom.
Indicator: Share classroom materials and work successfully with a partnerStandard 2: Students will use English to obtain, process, construct, and provide subject matter information in spoken and written form.
Indicator: Gather and organize the appropriate materials needed to complete a task
Duration: 50 min.

Materials/Equipment:
· Country Life and City Life Books, (such as Social Studies texts, Encyclopedias, books about large cities, rural areas, etc.). Examples might include countryside pictures, farms, towns, crops, livestock, Appalachian children, Amish, city parks, activities, subways, roads, traffic, buildings, etc.
· Magazines, such as National Geographic, Life, Outdoors, Country Living, Rural Missouri, etc.
· Posters/Pictures depicting City and Country Life
· Butcher Paper
· Drawing paper Drawing and coloring media (crayons, markers, etc.)
· KWL Form (What do I Know?, What do I Want to know? What did I Learn)
Peer-Assessment Rubric
Evaluation Rubric

Warm-up:
Begin a class discussion by showing posters/pictures depicting both Country and City Life and asking students what these represent or mean to them.

Task chain 1. Make a list
1. Divide students into groups of 3 or 4. Give students a few minutes to make a list of items related to life in the city and what they know. Next, ask students to make a list of items related to life in the country and what they know.
2. Teacher makes a divided list on the board or on butcher paper with headings of Country and City. Students contribute to the category of each list beginning with Country.

Task chain 2 Break into categories and consolidate
1. The teacher and students then break the list into different categories. This is based on the items provided by students. In groups, students create a list of what they want to know about country and city life.
2. The students list is broken down into people, places, and things. Students are given an area of interest and research the topic using books and other resources provided. The teacher and students create an outline of what is expected from each group. This information is consolidated in individual groups and students present their findings to the class in a teacher and student decided format.

Task chain 3 Make a poster
1. Students individually make a list of what they have learned. Next, students will create a picture ( in their choice of mediums) of a country or city scene with a narrative of what is happening in the scene. This poster should represent what students have learned from the information presented.
2. Students voluntarily share their narrative writing with the class. All writing work is posted in the room or outside the room under the title "City and Country Life".

Summative Assessment:
Grading each student’s work using the Assessment Rubric.
2 points/each section in KWL sheet.
(See Assessment Rubric)

Formative assessment:
1. The instructor uses the specific sections of the Assessment Rubric to grade each student’s works (see Rubric for grading).2. The instuctor adds the score of peer-assessment on the final assessment.

Mini-lesson for sentence fluency

Mini-lesson for sentence fluency

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Writing prompt

Assignment #2-1 Writing prompt by Sooyeun Kim

1.Reading Journal entry

What do you think someone your age can do to help reduce the amount of pollution in our environment?

2.Free-writing

If you could only take 3 people with you on a trip around the world, who would you take and why?

3.Expository Writing

How would you feel if a new child moved into your neighborhood?

4.Narrative Writing

When someone picks on someone else, how do you feel? What do you do?

5.Descriptive Writing

How do you feel when you want something very badly and you cannot have it? Why is this so important to have?

6.Creative Writing

What TV or movie star would you like to invite to your birthday party?


Assignment #2-2 Writing workshop by Sooyeun Kim

* Title

To make an extended story after reading THE HUNGRY GIANT, and THE HUNGRY GIANTS SOUP by Joy Cowley

* Instructor : Sooyeun Kim

* Number of Students : 8 students

* Level: Grade 1~2

* Length : 50 mins.

* Materials Required: Folders, paper, pencils....

* Learning objective

To improve writing: To help students comprehend the story and make another story

* Outline

1. Mini-Lesson (5-10 min.)
2. Status of the Class (2-3 min.)
3. Writing (20-40 min.) & Conferencing
4. Sharing (10 min.)

* TESOL Standard

Standard 1. English language learners communicate for social, intercultural and instructional purposes within the school setting

* Task Chain 1

1. Instruct let students read THE HUNGRY GIANT, and THE HUNGRY GIANTS SOUP by Joy Cowley (This takes about 2 weeks. They need a lot of experience with the books.) Then Instructor sets them up with the idea about extending the story to part 3.

2. 1. Instructor has all of them write their stories.

* Task Chain 2
1. Instructor picks about 1/3 of the class to publish. Instructor types them up and assign illustrators to help illustrate.

2. The finished product is the word typed on the bottom of a regular ditto page they color right on the ditto paper.

3. Instructor then has 1/3 Publishing, 1/3 Illustrating, and 1/3 with work in progress. That means Instructor will be conferencing with only a few students.

4. This helps him/her to get comfortable with the entire process.

5. Instructor makes sure students who are illustrators must publish a book before they can help illustrate another book this makes sure those artistic students get to publish also.

* Final Assessment:
Use the assessment sheet and students check their awareness of sequence.

Introductory - Sooyeun Kim

My name is Sooyeun Kim, a director and owner of private kindergarten in Seoul, Korea. I have my 2 kids, 12 year old boy and 10 year old girl and typical Korean husband(do you know what I mean?)
As a director, I'm always asking myself 'Am I a professional teacher? Am I a good program coordinator? Am I providing effective education service for children? etc. But I'm still not sure the answer and finding a solution. TESOL will be a good solution, I think. Actually I don't have enough time to forcus on studying, but I will do my best to keep studying.