Assignment #7:Grade Level Writing Portfolio

Here is the link to my group assignment #7 Grade Level Writing Portfolio.
(Achimisul Park, Ja Eun Kim, Ju Hyun Lee, Soo Hyun Kim)

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16461733/545%20Grade%20Level%20Writing%20Portfolio_Achimisul%20Park,%20Ja%20Eun%20Kim,%20Ju%20Hyun%20Lee,%20Soo%20Hyun%20Kim.doc

Tompkins Ch.1 Teaching Children to Write

The process approach to writing instruction is based on how real writer write. The five stages of the writing process are prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. Teachers support and scaffold children as they learn to write, gradually giving them more and more responsibility. "The five levels of support are modeled writing, shared writing, interactive writing, guided writing, and independent writing". (Tompkins, 2008, p.2) As a supporter, teachers do many things like writing along with children, and guiding children to develop ideas for their writing, record ideas on paper, and proofread to correct errors. However, Sheena (2007) said "As a class teacher, she has come to see that if children are to develop as successful learners, children should be asked to write on topics that matter to them: writing contexts must be meaningful, taking children’s experiences and interests into account".

According to Ja Eun Kim, the role of the teachers in this teaching process is very important. I totally agree with her that the role of a writing teacher is a facilitator. There are many things for a writing facilitator to do such as revising, fiving feedback, and so on. Writing teachers can make children see their development and have an interest and excitement in writing.

Tompkins, G. E. (2008). Teaching Writing: Balancing Process and Product. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Sheena, M. (2007). Interactive whiteboards and talking books: a new approach to teaching children to write?. Literacy, 41, 26-34.

Tompkins Ch.5 Journal Writing

According to Tompkins (2008, p.98), "The purpose of journal writing is that children use journals to record personal experiences, explore reactions and interpretations to books they read and videos they view, and record and analyze information about literature, writing, and social studies and science topics". Journal forms include personal journals, dialogue journals, reading logs, learning logs, double-entry journals, and simulated journals. This type of writing is so private that the readers is usually the writer himself or herself or typically well-known and trusted. Meanwhile, Dannelle (2010) discovered that "Reflective journal writing and mentoring help foreign graduate students de-stress, learn the tacit knowledge of the academy and participate in scholarly activities like conference presentations and publishing".

Soo Hyun Kim says that dialogue journals is the good way to get to know children better by having a dialogue or conversation in dialogue journal. It affects not only relationship between teacher and children but also children’s writing in response to teachers’ requests. I totally agree with her. It's because journal writing is so private and if a teacher is the one that children can share their writing with, it means that close relationship is constructed between a teacher and a child.

Tompkins, G. E. (2008). Teaching Writing: Balancing Process and Product. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Dannelle, S. (2010). Mentoring through reflective journal writing: A qualitative study by a mentor/professor and two international graduate students. Reflective practice, 11, 347-367.

Tompkins Ch.11 Poetry Writing

Poetry writing is good for children to create image, explore feelings and entertain. Tompkins (2008, p.240) states that "Forms include formula poems, free-form poems, syllable- and word-count poems, rhymes verse forms, and poems modeled on other poems". When they experiment with poetic forms and devices, children are able to write interesting poems. By the way, according to Atsushi (2008), "Japanese poetry, haiku, has been widely accepted in western countries. Lots of studies have reported on the applicability of haiku poetry to teaching practices in a variety of contexts".

Achimisul Park says in this chapter the fact that children are instinctively in favor of poem because of its rhythm is absolutely true from the way that children love chant songs. Yet, in Korea, the poem is thought of not as exciting or interesting form, but just short literature form. For some part, I agree with her. However, I‘d like to add that most Korean students are afraid of writing poems since they regard poem as a difficult literature. I think developing poetry writing's lesson plans for Korean students is urgent.

Tompkins, G. E. (2008). Teaching Writing: Balancing Process and Product. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Atsushi, I. (2008). Poetry writing as expressive pedagogy in an EFL context: Identifying possible assessment tools for haiku poetry in EFL freshman college writing. Assessing Writing, 13, 171-179.

Tompkins Ch.10 Descriptive Writing

According to Tompkins (2008, p.218), "Descriptive writing techniques are used to paint word pictures and to make their writing more concrete and vivid by noting specific information, choosing words carefully, creating sensory images, crafting comparisons, and adding dialogue". Descriptive writing techniques can be used in all genres, especially poetry and stories.  Anne and Bob (2004) suggests "The six-stage process strategy focuses on effective sentence writing traits while integrating an awareness of morphology and syntax during sentence development". The stepwise structure helps the students learn to task analyze sentence writing, thus making it easier to form sentences.

Kyoungchun Kim says if he uses one of five useful techniques when teaching writing, he’d like to choose comparisons. It’s because metaphors and similes look like poems that children can read with ease. In addition, they can stimulate children’s imagination and understanding to develop. I thinks his idea is reasonable, and in my case, sensory images would more effective since my students are more likely to be interested in visual aids.

Tompkins, G. E. (2008). Teaching Writing: Balancing Process and Product. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Anne, D., & Bob, A. (2004). Improving Descriptive Sentence Writing in Elementary Students. Preventing School Failure, 48, 34-36.

Tompkins Ch.9 Narrative Writing

"Children use narrative writing to create both fictitious and true stories that entertain readers. A fully developed story involves a problem, which is introduced in the beginning, becomes more complicated in the middle, and is resolved at the end" (Tompkins, 2008, p.194). In narrative writing, children use various methods such as retelling familiar stories, writing sequels and new episodes for favorite characters, and composing original stories. According to Sharon (2010), "Greater narrative structure was associated with mental health gains, and self-rated emotionality of the essays was associated with lesser perceived stress in her study".

Min Gyu Kim states that this narrative writing would be the type of writing that children at a young age would be very into. In their young age, they would really enjoy being read a story, especially before they sleep. While reading his idea, I clapped my hands with a full agreement. I was one of those young children who liked to not only listen to a story but also tell a story. I think that if it is modified a little for adults, it could appeal them very much, too.  

Tompkins, G. E. (2008). Teaching Writing: Balancing Process and Product. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Sharon, D. (2010). Does narrative writing instruction enhance the benefits of expressive writing?. Anxiety, Stress & Coping, 23, 341-352.

Tompkins Ch.8 Expository Writing

Expository writing is used for learning and sharing information. In expository writing, there are "All About..." books, ABC books, riddles, posters, diagrams, charts, and multigenre projects. According to Tomkins (2008, p.173), "Contrary to the popular assumption that young children's first writing is narrative, researchers have found that kindergartners and first graders write many nonnarrative compositions in which they provide information about familiar topics". According to Piccolo (1987), "There are different types of expository structures. These structures include descriptive, comparison and contrast, sequence, and cause and effect". These structures may be useful to enhance children's expository writing skills.

According to Woo Je Joe, writers build up strong organization to make readers understand easily. If they use graphic organizers, it will help readers grasp the contents well. I've experienced to make graphic organizers before writing essay. From my experience, graphic organizers must be so useful to writers to organize the contents as well as to readers to understand the contents.

Tompkins, G. E. (2008). Teaching Writing: Balancing Process and Product. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Piccolo, A. (1987). Expository text structure: Teaching and learning strategies. The Reading Teacher, 40, 838–.847.

Tompkins Ch.7 Biographical Writing

According to Tompkins (2008, p.144), "Children use biographical writing to chronicle event in their own and other people's lives, to reflect on experience, and to draw generalizations about life." Personal narratives, autobiographies, and biographies are included in this writing. Expecially, personal narratives seem like keeping a diary. Also, if children add a picture to it, it can be a picture writing. It appears that most of writing types are related to one another partly. However, not like personal narratives, biography has heavier meaning. Mary (2010) says "Writing a biography is much more than recording facts. Good biographies make people live, highlight their accomplishments, and present the puzzles of their life".

Sunmi Kim indicates that writing biographies of others offers insightful opportunities as well in that they can examine a person’s life- living or dead, accomplished or nominal- from historical, psychological, or sociological perspective. As I cited above, biographies let people live, stress their achievements, and show their lives. As for auto biographies, Tompkins (2008) suggests a variety of writing method such as "All about me" books, life boxes, bio bags, "Me" quilts, and chapter books. They would be very useful writing teaching methods to anyone who has no idea about how to instruct biographical writing.

Tompkins, G. E. (2008). Teaching Writing: Balancing Process and Product. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Mary, M. (2010). Tips on writing a biography: Here is a process for deciding on a subject and giving your manuscript interest and shape. Writer, 123, 23–24.

Tompkins Ch.4 Assessing Children's Writing

The goal of writing assessment is "To help children become better writers. Teachers regularly use informal monitoring procedures to keep track of children's progress" (Tompkins, 2008, p.74). There are observing, conferencing, collecting writing samples, and keeping records in informal monitoring process. Melissa (2009) indicates that "Authentic assessment tools will provide the teacher of English language learners with insights about their students' writing development and showcase their writing progress over time". That's why the development of effective evaluation is very important.

  

According to Soo Hyun Kim, teachers can help children to be better writers(sophisticated writers) to measure how well children are using the writing process by using process writing assessment. Observing, conferencing, collecting, and scoring can be the assessment tools. While reading this, I realized that the higher the quality of assessment are, the higher the reliability of assessment is. And I've decided to put my effort more into the creative and credible assessment method.

Tompkins, G. E. (2008). Teaching Writing: Balancing Process and Product. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Melissa, S. (2009). Effective writing assessment and instruction for young English language learners. Early Childhood Education Journal, 37, 52-62.

Tompkins Ch.3 Writing Strategies and Skills

Tompkins (2008, p.52) defines that "Strategies are probelm-solving behaviors that wirters use thoughtully and consicously. In constrast skills are information-processing techiniques that writers use automatically and unconsciouly". To provide direct instruction about strategies and skills, it is a good teaching method for students to make minilessons about them. As Marleen (2007) states "The two most well-defined writing strategies that have been identified, are those of a planning strategy and a revising strategy".

According to Ja Eun Kim, there are two kinds of writers: capable writers and struggling writers. The capable writers are able to write in a required genre and revise and evaluate their writings by themselves. The struggling writers, however, have a hard time to produce their writings in different genres freely. In order to help them, teachers need to teach them the writing strategies and skills equally. However, I think there might be a little different writing approaches to teach each of them. 

Tompkins, G. E. (2008). Teaching Writing: Balancing Process and Product. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Marleen, K. (2007). The effects of adapting a writing course to students' writing strategies. British journal of educational psychology, 77, 565-578.

Tompkins Ch.2 Writing Workshop

"There are writing, sharing, minilessons and reading aloud to children in the components of writing workshop". Tompkins (2008, p.30) stated that the purpose of writing workshop is to provide children with opportunities to use the writing process to create books and other compositions. Writing Workshop is an interactive approach to teaching writing as students learn and practice the importance of rehearsal, drafting/revising, and editing their pieces of writing (Calkins, 1986; Graves, 1983). According to Calkins (1986), "In this writing workshop approach, children write about what is vital and real for them".

Ja Eun Kim says that students need to be able to write on a self-selected topic and apply the writing process independently. Therefore, one of the best ways of helping them work by themselves is writing workshop. I believe it's true. The main goal of writing workshop is to stimulate the children's creativity.

Tompkins, G. E. (2008). Teaching Writing: Balancing Process and Product. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Calkins, L. M. (1986). The art of teaching writing. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Graves, D. (1983). Writing: Teachers and children at work. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Assignment #3: Graphic Organizers

Visualizing Strategy(Juhyun Lee)

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My teaching experiences and target teaching levels

In 2003, I passed the National teacher certification examination and became an English teacher and have been teaching English until now. Therefore, this year is the 8th year of my teaching experience.
Since I have a certification to teach English to middle and high school students, they are my target teaching levels.