WRITING COMMUNITIES

The Columbus Area Writing Project Summer Institute ended Friday.


We began as individuals with our personal goals, issues and concerns. We each brought our confidences and our talents, our frailties and our fears.

We carried this baggage to Kenyon College for the opening retreat of our summer institute.

There we weathered a tornado warning and serious storm.
There we began to build our writing community.

We have been together-- sharing our stories and our writing and our questions,  learning, researching, crying, laughing, changing, and growing for the past 2 1/2 weeks.

We questioned our beliefs, challenged our long held stances, affirmed our work, considered many new resources, books, and ideas, and opened new doors-- as people and as educators. 

But... now the summer institute is over.

What do we do today?

We write individually.  Pages are filled by one.  

But writing is often best shared, revised, and honored in community.
How do we develop and maintain that community? 

The year I was a  participating fellow in the Columbus Area Writing Project summer institute (2005), I did not want to lose this writing in community. How quickly, once introduced, this becomes a necessary part of life!

In the fall, back in my school, I addressed this new need in two ways---I began a teachers' writing group, as well as an after-school writing group for students.  Both lasted four or five years and were extremely successful and fulfilling.

For several years CAWP also hosted writing happy hours throughout the year in which teacher consultants from various summer institute cohorts came together regularly to share food,  drink....  and writing.

More recently, our  CAWP inquiry group, having completed their research, culminating with a presentation at NCTE 2012, decided to continue to meet together, not as researchers, but in a new configuration--an ordinary (or extraordinary)  writing group. They did not want to give up their community.

Writing communities can be formal --as part of established institutions, like those within writing projects or schools, or  less formal--like those begun among colleagues or friends.  They can be composed of young  folks--like my after-school groups or classroom peer groups, or they can be adults of any age.


Jim Vopat reminds us in the introduction to his book of the long standing history and tradition of writing groups :

 Writers, sharing and talking about what they have written with other writers has likely been happening for as long as people have been writing. As Ann Ruggles Gere puts it in Writing Groups: History, Theory and Implications, " Writers have always asked friends and colleagues for feedback" (1987,22). For famous authors as well as kids reading stories they've written to each other,  there is something immensely satisfying in sharing writing and getting a response. ( p.3)

Vopat's book, Writing Circles: Kids Revolutionize Workshop provides a great foundation on which to build if you are interested in starting writing groups with kids. 

For additional support with writing groups for kids, I have always relied on the series of books by Ralph Fletcher, as both texts for my student writers, as well as sources of writing ideas.  Visit his web page to  learn more about this set of books.



For adult groups, there are many resources that are helpful.  I recommend my personal "writing teachers in my head": Natalie Goldberg, Georgia Heard and Bonnie Goldberg.  Their books will provide enough ideas  to keep a writing group going for years.  See my previous related post, The Writer's Notebook Part 2 (Resources) for a more complete list of recommendations of resources that will support your writing groups.

The writing prompts I use for writing groups of both kids and adults usually come from my own book, Deeper Writing: Quick Writes and Mentor Texts to Illuminate New Possibilities.  The ideas in this book can easily be adapted to fit your writing group's needs.


And finally, if you are interested in teacher inquiry writing groups,  Teachers' Writing Groups: Collaborative Inquiry and Reflection for Professional Growth by Sarah Robbins, George Seaman and Kathleen Blake -Yancey is an excellent resource.

 Today's Deeper Writing Possibilities

List  people that you might want to include in your own writing group.

What are the benefits in being a part of writing group?  What might be disadvantages that my hinder your writing?


Write about your expectations for  your writing group.  You may also want to create a list of rules to assist your group in running smoothly.  For example, there may be a limit on  the length of pieces shared or how often each member shares or how topics for writing are selected.

RESPONDING TO WRITING

How do we respond to the writing of others?

How do we give helpful feedback? How do we make suggestions or give constructive criticism?

How do we tell someone what we think about their words, their writing, their exposed heart ?

There are several settings in which we may share our writing and give and receive feedback.
There are several approaches  for this most delicate activity.

We can sit as partners, side by side, each sharing and responding to the other--or it may be only only one of those partners shares on a particular occasion.

We can gather in a small group of three or four or five, or not many more, to hear a chorus of responses to our work and add our own voices to the chorus for someone else.

We can gather in a large group of writers--- or an entire class-- for a read-around, for a whole group sharing.  
   
Read-around is a strategy for sharing writing developed by Linda Christensen.  You may read

more about this effective strategy in her book, Reading, Writing and Rising Up on pages 14 -15 or in her online article at Choice Literacy entitled The Read- Around: Raising Writers.

In my own classroom, we had several guidelines for large or whole group sharing  that served us well:

• Time may not permit everyone to share, so if you shared the day before we asked you to wait until others have shared.
• You have the right to pass and not share.
• You have the right to receive no feedback or specify the type you  would like to receive. (For example, I would like to hear only what works, or I would like to know if the setting description is enough.)

Whatever the platform for sharing and responding, it is essential to consider the words that we use to express our thoughts about the writing shared with us.  We must strike a balance between approval and useless gush,  between the creative tension of criticism and that fine line that crosses into cruelty, and between an intelligent intuition about useful suggestions versus controlling comments.

In the introduction to my own book, Deeper Writing on pages 10-12,   I  describe how early in the year, prior to our first read-around, we also began to learn language that would support our

responses, providing a scaffold for our opinions, and both guiding and guarding our responses so that we created a safe, sharing community.

I would model the use of this language extensively, and then guide 
students' practice. They easily took on independent use of the language and were able to extend it to include their own language.  




Helpful responses for us included:

• I like... ( words, phrases, sentences, ideas, metaphors juxtapositions, connections, strategies, etc)
• I want to hear more about...(call for more details or specificity)
• I don't understand...(call for clarity)
• I suggest...(specific suggestions for the writer with examples)

• I am wondering if...or I noticed... (general reflection)

If I were still working in my own classroom I would also add the following:

You may want to look at... (pointing to a mentor texts or other resource-- this writer, that book , this poem... or talk to this person.)

In addition, sometimes we need more information or understanding about a piece of writing before we can confidently and helpfully respond.  The following questions have always 
served me well in talking with writers about their writing:

• What are you trying to do?
• Why are you writing this piece?
• Who do you want to share it with?  Who do you want to read it and why?
• What do you feel needs to be revised, still accomplished?
• How can I help?

During the read- arounds or other forms of sharing, students were encouraged to take brief notes so that their responses could be as specific as possible.  

The student receiving feedback was the only person to write on her paper.  Even in partner sharing, this was my policy.  

I often encouraged the use of different colors of pencil or pen for recording feedback for possible revisions --one color for revision or notes made by the writer herself before the piece is shared, and then another color for recording notes made about comments by others while sharing.  

An additional excellent resource that you may find helpful as you set up writing groups and other platforms for sharing and responding to writing is Writing Circles: Kids Revolutionize

Workshop  by Jim Vopat.  Not only does he share many helpful strategies for responding, but also an entire framework for establishing student-led writing groups--including information about topic selection, keeping notebooks, publishing,  time management,  and more.

Today's Deeper Writing Possibilities

Select a partner, small group, or whole group setting in which to share a piece of writing on which you have been working.

Before sharing, reread your own writing and consider  the revisions that you think are needed.

You may want to refer to the previous related post on revision, Rewriting Texts,  for suggestions.

Write a list of the revisions you are considering.

Also write a reflective paragraph about the kind of feedback you would appreciate for you piece.

After sharing, write a summary paragraph detailing the actual comments and responses  you received about your writing. 

What did you learn about your writing? about this specific piece? about sharing and giving and receiving feedback to writing?