Ch. 6 - Capitalize on the Reading-Writing Connection

My first thought, before I read a word beyond the title, was a memory of the primary grades computer lab at our elementary school years ago. I was not teaching then, but my daughter had just started school. At that time, computer lab time for K-2 was called "Write to Read." The children played various games to build skills for part of the time, but mostly they wrote stories. The person that ran the lab moved away and the next person changed things quite a bit. I realize now that the earlier program was research-based.
When I first started teaching kindergarten, we had a lot of frustrations with that lab. There were technology objectives to be met, and that was all that mattered. We used that time to have a small group work with the teacher while the rest were engaged with the computers, and each group had one day a week for "table time." For some reason this generated a collosal uproar that K teachers were hampering technology objectives. We countered with research that indicated K children should not be spending time in front of computer screens at all, and that spending 45 minutes each week "missing" computer lab to work closely with their teacher was a good thing, not a bad thing. The earlier "Write to Read" program had been set up with teacher input, and was more valuable than I realized at the time. What followed was an almost "us" vs "them" period. We had a new principal who had no elementary experience and who had a stint as technology director behind her, after serving as principal of the middle school and teaching high school english for years before that. Nobody had evil intent, of course, but those who were completely enamored with technology had no training in how young children learn.

Rereading is an essential part of writing. I saw this with my 3rd graders all the time - when I would have them re-read their text to me they were often shocked to hear a gap in the story that they were sure they had actually covered in their writing. This is especially clear if, as the author suggests, they wait a day. We see what we expect to see when we read our own writing, and kids sometimes forget that the reader doesn't know what the writer knows unless it's all there on the paper.

"One of the most effective ways to teach reading comprehension is by asking students to write summaries." (p. 127) Students have to think about the author's purpose, sequence of events, valuable details, and put it all in their own words. These are all activities that will hone a student's writing skills and his or her ability to read contemplatively. The text has a lot of great classroom activities for developing students' summarizing skills. Experience writing brief summaries or explanations of text also empowers students to do well on high-stakes tests that include similar writing activities.