Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Do more Shared Writing

Shared writing builds on what the teacher has already modeled through writing aloud and helps with scaffolding students. The topic must be engaging to students and can be used with pairs, groups, or whole class. Shared writing is ideal for all learners. I especially like the idea of shared writing for the ELL students, challenged learners, and economically underprivileged students. Shared writing helps provide the rich oral language modeling that stimulates literacy development. When the topic is interesting for the students, the students see and value its purpose, and are motivated to work harder.

The teaching tips that go along with shared writing were helpful. They included: choosing a meaningful topic, say the words as you go, shape students’ language, move along quickly, look for opportunities for all students to participate, and stop and reread as you go. One of the most interesting to me was looking for opportunities for all students to participate. This could be done by saying, “What if the story went this way, or “What do you think is a better idea for this part”? Children could continue the class-generated story on their own or with a partner and write their own endings.

One part of the chapter I found helpful was cutting up and reassembling sentences. This could be done as a center in first grade. This is a great way for students to learn how language works. I am always looking for creative centers, especially reading and writing centers. This chapter gave me a lot of ideas: writing messages, demonstrating cutting words apart and reassembling them, making word sorts, working with words, making words with tiles, and writing a mystery message.