What is there to teach about Writing to Think?

This was a very interesting chapter. I even respected how Bomer mentioned minilessons will not take hold after one lesson, it will take multiple lessons and practice for students to truly understand even one strategy. The next section spoke about the diverse types of notebook entries. It is hard to pick just two of these to write about. As I was reading, I kept saying to myself "ooh I like this one" then I would read the next section and would say " ooh I like this one too".

Even though I liked all of them, there were two that I never have thought of before. The first is compressing entries into a single entry. Many of my students never look back over what they have previously written. I also notice that they write about the same thing over and over again. With this strategy, students take multiple entries that they have made (this will force them to go back and read) and find a common theme between them. Once they figure out what is in common they will write about that theme, which causes the students to synthesize the information. I really like this for my older students. Sometimes they just write about what is bothering them at the moment, but maybe having them see a pattern from their writing will help them see what the problem really is and possibly a solution for it. I know this isn't the reason behind this strategy but it could be a nice result.

Another strategy Bomer mentions is writing from multiple perspectives. Perspective has been an underlying theme in our class this year (which makes me wonder how many of my classmates wrote about this same strategy). The point of this strategy is to write the same event from multiple perspectives. The reason I chose this strategy is because of a student I have been mentoring lately. She is a foster student who has been known as one of the worst behavior problems at our school. The past couple of months she has really opened up to me and I have been able to get through to her any time she has a melt down. One of those days was today. As we were talking she told me what had happened (it was something that had to do with other students and a teacher). We talked through it and I asked her why she thought the students and teacher reacted the ways they did. She was able to realize on her own that she really was at fault in this situation and wanted to go and apologize to her class and teacher. This student has recently told me she is being adopted in a few weeks! This brings on it's own fears and concerns for this student. I have been trying to figure out something to leave this student with before she goes and reading this chapter sparked an idea. I am going to buy her a cute notebook and pens. During our remaining days we will talk about journaling and using the multiple perspectives strategy when she moves to a new school. I pray that she has a good teacher that can find the good in her and take her under her wing but in case that doesn't happen this would be a good way for her to learn to cope and reflect on situations in a better way than she has been doing.

I know that these strategies are more about writing than working through emotions but we all know adolescents have their share of them.

The remaining of the chapter talked about intentional strategies versus assignments. I felt that Bomer wanted to emphasize that a writer's notebook is not a place for assignments but more of a free space for students to express themselves. This is a safe place that they can write whatever they want and that the teacher is invited into as a guest. Minilessons can give students ideas and suggestions about what to write about but ultimately it needs to be the student's decision. If a teacher tells the student that they have to use a certain strategy it puts the student's creativity in a box and will usually be written to please the teacher versus showing what the student really could do.

A notebook is a place full of ideas that can be brought out at a later time and expanded on or explored. This should not be done in the notebook but in a separate space. Teachers can even use this as an assignment by having student reread what they wrote and pick a topic to write about. They then can spend some time putting in entries about that selected topic which can be revised, edited and developed on into a larger writing assignment.