Chapter 11: Reading – Writing Connections

Macy Bombard

Relationships between reading and writing and what the research states: Students should be invited to read what they write, and write about what they are reading. Both are language and experience based. Both require active involvement from language learners. Some conclusions about relationship between reading and writing:

• Reading and writing processes are correlated, good readers are generally good writers and vice versa
• Students who write well tend to read more than those who are less capable writers
• Wide reading may be as effective in improving writing as actual practice in writing 
• Good readers and writers are likely to engage in reading and writing independently because they have healthy concepts of themselves as readers and writers

Historical evidence shows writing and reading develop concurrently and should be cultured together. They are complementary processes.

How to create an informal writing environment:

• Give opportunities to write freely
• Encourage invented spelling
• Radiate positivity

Suggestions to encourage classroom writing:

• Encourage students to write about their interests, provide opportunities for reading literature, surfing the internet, and brainstorming
• Share good examples of student writing with students, this serves as a good model
• Value what students have written
• Be encouraging
• Do some writing of your own to share with students
• Tie writing into all curriculum
• Start a writing center where writers can go to find ideas 
• Create a relaxed atmosphere 

What can students write about: Students should be writing about things that interest them. Topics that students have strong feelings about are also good to write about. When students like what they are writing about they are more likely to want to do well.

Writing activities: 

• Penpals
• Writing stories for publication on the internet
• Writing for the school newspaper
• Author of the week
• Entering writing contests
• Daily journals
• Songwriting
• Reviews of movies or tv shows
• Cartoon scripts

Dialogue journal: Provides a natural setting which the child and teacher converse in writing. Teacher responds to the students writing with comments, questions, and invitations to students to further express their ideas

Buddy Journal: Variation of  dialogue journal. Instead of dialogue between a teacher and a student, the written conversation occurs between students. Dialogue journals should be done before buddy journaling so that students are comfortable with journaling format. Buddys may converse about anything that interests both of them. 

Key Pals: Electronic equivalent of pen pals. This can be done through email

Double-entry journals: Provides students with opportunity to identify text passages that are interesting and meaningful to them. A way to explore in writing.Students fold sheets of paper in half, creating two columns for journal entries. LEft hand column is for quotes from the text. In the right hand column readers enter their personal responses and reactions to the quotes.

Reading Journals: Provide students with more structure and less choice in deciding what they will write about. Teacher will provide a prompt to guide the students writing. 

Response journals: Response journals also include prompts from the teacher. The difference is that these journals invite students to respond to literary texts freely, within the prompt. 

Writing Notebooks: Where students gather their observations, thoughts, reactions, ideas, unusual words, pictures, and interesting facts that might later spur them to write. These notebooks are meant to provide students with a place to collect their thoughts for future journaling. 

Multigenre project: (a paper) a collection of genres that reflects multiple responses to a book, theme, or topic. Students are given choices about which genres to use, and they experiment with writing in a variety of ways. Examples of genres include advice columns, biographies, comic strips, death notices, greeting cards, posters, prayers, and talk show transcripts. 

Plot scaffolds: open ended script in which students use their imaginations and creative writing in a playful manner. Includes characters, setting, problem, and resolution with spaces for the students to write additional descriptions and problem-solving dialogue. Prior to the plot scaffold, students are taught that story plots have more than the beginning, middle, and ending. They include the answers to three questions: What if…., what is the catch, and what then (how is the problem solved?

Traditional Writing Process: 

• Brainstorming: Time to generate ideas, stimulate thinking, make plans, and create a desire to write. A way for students to get energized
• Drafting: “getting it down”. When students get their ideas down in rough draft form.  A good time for teachers to confer with students individually to answer questions and support as needed. How is the writing going, how far have they gotten, what parts are giving them problems, are they leaving anything out, what is their next step, how does the draft sound when it is read out loud, what is the major point that the students it trying to get across
• Revising: Whenever a student receives feedback it is considered a conference. Students will have many opportunities to read their work aloud during conferences. When a teacher is in a conference with a student, their role is to listen. Steps of a conference: Writer reads the draft aloud, teacher listens carefully for the meaning of the draft, teacher then mirrors the content, focuses praise, elicits clarification, makes suggestions, and seeks the writer’s commitment. Encourage students to be messy with the revision. Being neat is not as important for now. 
• Editing: where students pull together all the revisions and make a neat copy of the writing including the revisions. Accuracy counts during this stage. Attention to spelling and grammar is also important. 
• Publishing: Writing is for reading. Give students writing the opportunity to be read by others. This gives writers a sense of accomplishment and ownership. 

Writing workshop: Begins by providing students with the structure they need to understand, develop, or use specific writing strategies or by giving them direction in planning their writing or in revising their drafts. 

1. Minilesson (3-10 mins)
2. Writing process (45-120)
3. Group share session (10-15_

Minilesson: A list mini session to get students started on their writing project. 

Group share session: Purpose is to have writers reflect on the days work:

• How did the writing go?
• Did you write better today than yesterday?
• Was it hard for you to keep your mind on what you were writing?
• What do you think you’ll work on tomorrow?
• What problems did you have today?
• Raise concerns, read aloud, ,mirror the content and focus on praise
• Make suggestions

Guided Writing: Teacher scaffolds writing as it happens. This means teaching writing skills that students need based on observations and through conversations with students during their writing process. (ex: developing main idea)

Technology: 

• Text production and publishing: Because online writing is easily made to be messy and unorganized, this serves as a great way for students to continually revise their work and make changes. Using technology helps students to examine ideas, organize and report information and inquiry findings, and communicate with others. 

Classroom application: In my mind I have always known that reading and writing go hand in hand, I juts never knew exactly how. This chapter gave a really great explanation of the ways reading and writing are related and how we can incorporate each of them together.