Minilesson and Conferring

The teaching of writing institute is intense especially when it conflicts with my final week of another going-on research methodology course. I have really got a CRAZY week... But fortunately it is a high-quality week-long class that is far beyond my expectation. I never thought about that writing can be taught in such a well-structured way which is full of fun. I feel excited about the processes of teaching: (1) the 10-minute mini lesson for building up connections to fit into students’ works, demonstrating strategies for writing, engaging students by asking students to practice the strategy just taught, and linking the going-on lesson to content/strategies taught previously; and (2) the ways of conferring with students individually and in a small group.

In a writing workshop, the min lesson which takes the first 10 minutes of the workshop is very important to support students’ independent writing. It will provide students with strategies for writing and students will be the ones who take the choices of strategies with them through their entire life in writing. The strategies may not help students to shape their main work that they need to complete on that day but will get students familiar with different meanings realized via different strategies. The processes of practices will enable students to build up a rich writing repertoire for their increasing growth. Since there are only ten minutes for the mini lesson, the instruction needs to be very succinct, and the demonstration of writing needs to be very detailed.

Conferring with students is another important component in teaching of writing. Conferring gives good moments for differentiated teaching. A conference consists of research (finding out what students are working on, where they are, and what problems they might encounter), compliment (encouraging students’ going-on work and support the strategies students already used in their works), teach (what further help they might need and what strategies they can apply to make their writing better), and link (link the aforementioned teaching to the mini lesson or the previous strategies/content).

The processes of both the mini lesson and the conferring well match the Constructivism learning theory. Students are continuously learning from new strategies and their own practices while being linked to knowledge already or previously acquired. These approaches assist students to write, rather then restrict the content students want to write about. Teachers are more like facilitators rather than instructors. I wonder can this structured set of approaches (for teaching of English writing) be applied to students learning English as a second language? And can it be also applied to other languages, for example, for teachers teaching the writing of Chinese literacy in China? Actually, I have a strong and positive feeling about applying the structure of teaching to the teaching in China. I would love to experiment this teaching method in the English teaching in China when I get back home in the future.