One thing I've been thinking a lot about is creating a comfortable classroom environment. My students share some of their writing or thinking almost every day in their small groups but whenever I ask for students to share to the whole class, all I get is crickets. I want students to feel safe about sharing what they write and to also feel proud and excited to share their writing.
I really loved the activity we did at Orientation where Lil read the poem, "Hotel Nights with My Mother" and then we highlighted words and phrases that spoke to us. We then wrote from those lines as inspiration. Then as the poem was read aloud again, we interrupted with a line or two of what we wrote.
I tried it with my third period class and it did not go as well. I explained the instructions to them twice and then tried to jump into the activity without showing them a model of what I meant. I should also have shared with them what I wrote as well. The second time I read the poem out loud, no one interrupted me with what they wrote. They might have felt strange about interrupting me as well as shy about sharing what they wrote, since they are more comfortable sharing with their groups, and often don't share with the whole class. I can imagine they would feel even less comfortable sharing in a new type of activity. Perhaps I could have had them share with their groups first, maybe even have their groups record it in a lower-stakes environment, and then present their recordings to the class.
When I read the poem one more time, I did have two students respond. I tried to get more people to join in but only one more student did. I felt frustrated and tried to threaten them with participation points--big mistake on my part. But I ended up dropping it and didn't try it with my other classes. I shouldn't have assumed that it would have worked in the same way as it did at orientation, especially since I knew that my students already were shy about sharing in front of the whole class. I should have shown them an example of what it was like, and given them a smaller audience to begin with. I definitely want to work on easing in my classes to sharing with one another in a more gradual and continuous way next year.
One idea that I really like from the book I was given at orientation (Inside Out by Dan Kirby and Tom Liner) is to publish student writing every week. I don't think my students hardly ever got to see each others' writing! Their writing was usually for themselves or for me, not each other. The authors describe starting the week off with reading these anonymous student excerpts aloud and then opening the floor for comments on why the piece is good writing and what else could be done. I really like this idea so that students can see what they are doing.
Kirby and Liner also suggest starting off with collaborative poetry, where the class or a small group of students write a poem together (80). Perhaps this would have been a better way to ease my students into feeling more comfortable with sharing what they wrote.
