Progress?

After reading about Writer’s Workshop in Katie Wood Ray’s “About the Authors” this week, I realized that I should revisit Leo’s journal. Before, I had looked at each piece separately, but the reading had given me the idea to do another assessment based on his work over a period of time. Looking at all his pieces as a whole, and examining how they developed over time would be a valuable process if I wanted to see if anything had changed since the beginning of the year. The book states (p. 140) that children often repeat work in order to feel safe and competent as writers. This is completely understandable – I’d rather do something I’d done a million times that I knew I was good at than try something scary and new. This uncertainty causes kids to do things like draw the same house over and over (what I’d seen a little girl doing in class a few weeks ago when flipping through her notebook - she had nothing but identical pictures of houses on each page).  However, it is our job as teachers to push them out of their comfort zone, and into a zone where they can learn (Vygotsky, anyone?)

            With this knowledge, I saw Leo’s notebook with new eyes. His Star Wars pictures of Yoda, C3PO, and Darth Vader were clustered towards the front of his notebook – what had been the beginning of the year. His most recent drawings depicted other things, such as a Christmas tree, a frightening bug creature, a bear, and an extremely detailed pirate ship, complete with several pirates and even a parrot (labeled with a P). He characteristically told me, “I only need to label P once because P is for parrot AND pirate.” I couldn’t tell if this was a wonderful use of his knowledge of P sounds, or just laziness, but it’s clear that Leo has progressed since the beginning of the year regarding what he is choosing to put in his "writing."