The Joy of Writing

In addition to teaching science, I also team-teach language arts. I don't really blog about this other part of my job as a 5th-grade teacher very much because, well, a lot of the excitement that we have in my class is in science. Plus, if I blogged about everything I did at school, then this weekly blog would get rather long (and I don't know if I would have the energy to keep up with it).
Anyway, I think that teaching writing is probably one of the most challenging things to teach. The other subjects, for the most part, are very concrete, while writing can oftentimes be abstract. Trying to help children get their ideas down on paper (or a computer screen) in an original way is quite the task, and it was definitely the stress point for the week as we are trying to finalize our writing projects. The students are writing informational papers on topics of their choosing, and throughout the course of the unit, we have slowly been introducing, practicing, and applying different aspects of informational writing. Helping the students to use the strategies we have been teaching and applying the structure of informational writing has been daunting. Some of the students just want to write fact after fact, so incorporating paragraph structures and crazy things like hooks and thesis statements blows their minds. Throw in the fact that, like most other subjects, the students work at various paces, it can sometimes feel like I am spinning plates during writing. There are students who stick right along with the process as it is introduced, students that may be a step behind, and ones that seem like they won't be able to get a word down unless you are right beside them. It all does eventually come together...it's just a rather tiring process to get there!
Speaking of tiring, I'm going to cut this post off here for the day because I still have some other work to do. I have a substitute coming in tomorrow while I complete some science curriculum work, and I have half a dozen pieces of informational writing that I want to make comments on so that the students can revise ("But, Mr. Oetjen, I thought I was done!" :-)

Mindfulness thought for the week: Is what you are doing right now contributing to the version of yourself that you want to be? --Tom J. Deters, ProYou podcast

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