After reading these chapters, I had a couple questions arise as I read. The first being, "If students have lots of issues with their writing, should we really spend time praising when we have limited time in correcting their problems?" I can understand the thought process behind praising the child. It will obviously raise their self confidence about writing, but simply helping their self confidence does not change the fact that they are not comprehending certain aspects of craft. It just seemed to me that too much emphasis was placed on praise. This concept may have worked for the couple of success stories in the chapter, but does it really work for all students? That is the question.
The other question I had was "How can we properly balance teaching craft and mechanics?" It seemed to me like a lot of emphasis was placed on craft and not so much on mechanics. Mechanics are a very important aspect of learning how to write successfully so it is important to know how to break down your lessons to include both mechanics and craft.
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I feel the same way... I don't understand how you balance praising students successes and correcting them at the same time. I want my students to be able to improve on the things the struggle with just as much as I want them to improve and expand on the things they do well so how do we go about achieving that balance?
ReplyDeleteHere's a response that I've been sharing on the perils of praise. Sometimes it's just sugar-coated coercion and other times it's overdone and becomes meaningless. One way to address this is to sincerely compliment rather than pepper children with "Good, good, good". As for balancing encouragement and teaching, I don't think they're exclusive. Pointing out what a child is ready to learn is different than correcting mistakes. It's why we need to analyze and think carefully about next steps. Finally, some teachers use a rule of thumb in writing conferences, something like this: Point out one thing the child did well and one thing to try. Then, follow up with a try-it.
ReplyDeleteAlso, think about the scissors and the tape metaphor: Focus on mechanics when you want to trim and shrink a child's writing and craft when you want to pull it together and expand it.
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