How do different teachers enact specific literacy practices? What are the effects of these enactments on the children�€™s learning, behavior and work?
In our class we study a variety of methods of literacy instruction. The Quest sites give us entry into multiple classrooms, where we can see, question, and discuss a variety of teaching methods.
To use the sites to think about the teaching of literacy, we focused on the teaching of writing. The students did three weeks of site viewing at home and each week came prepared to discuss a particular site with a group of students. The three different weeks were designed to focus on three aspects of the teaching of writing: Writers workshop, Mini-lessons in writers workshop, and Conferencing in writers workshop. They were given the choice from three different sites to focus on one and really get to know it. These sites were Gill Maimon�€™s and Mattie Davis�€™ from Philadelphia, PA, and Jenn Myers from Morgan Hill, CA. Each week we met in small groups and then debriefed in the whole class about what they had observed and learned.
In addition to the video viewing assignments, they also had reading assignments from Routman�€™s Writing Essentials, the text we used to learn about the teaching of writing. Each week they were asked to compare what they saw in the videos with what they read in the text. During the final week, they also watched the dvd that accompanied the text to look at further examples of writing conferences.
Gill Maimon's site
Mattie Davis' site
Jenn Myers' site
Writers workshop viewing guide
Writers workshop viewing guide 2
Writing Mini lessons viewing guide
Writing conferences viewing guide
Writing conferences viewing guide 1
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