Last evening, I met with the King School Improvement Team (SIT) and the PTO board for a parent workshop focusing on writing, an area the SIT Team identified based on King's achievement data. The presenters of the meeting, Kim Pavlock and Cathy Fleischer, came to us from the Eastern Michigan Writing Project, a group that mainly focuses on helping teacher's teach writing. However, they are now offering a variety of parent workshops which was what they brought to King.
By all accounts (including the feedback sheets filled out by attendees), the presentation was helpful, useful, interesting and inspiring.
From the notes I took last night, I'll share the following as food for thought and discussion--and for our purposes, we should all consider ourselves "teachers" of our children.
Research basis for best practices around writing:
1. All children can and should write
2. Teachers must help students find real purposes to write
3. Students need to take ownership and responsibility
4. Effective writing programs involve the complete writing process
5. Teachers can help students get started
6. Teachers help students draft and revise
7. Grammar and mechanics are best learned in the context of actual writing
8. Students need real audiences and a classroom context of shared learning
9. Writing should extend throughout the curriculum
10. Effective teachers use evaluation constructively and efficiently
Our next step: Decide whether or not this same workshop would be helpful/useful to the wider King parent group. Stay tuned!
