Ray Ch. 6

I am glad to see that Ray is finally explaining how to go about teaching students about writing craft and "reading like a writer". The first thing that I noticed about this was that she says she reads a book over and over with her class to get to know the reading. At first I thought that this was strange, and that the students would probably get bored of hearing the same book, but then I got to thinking about reading with my parents and how we would always read the same books together (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Tacky the Penguin) and they never got old. I think you would have to pick a really great book to pull off reading the book so many times without the students getting bored.

The next thing I wondered when I was reading was what age the students are that she is teaching. It later said that the students were 4th graders. I thought this was interesting because 4th graders do not often read picture books in class (to my knowledge anyway). I'm sure 4th graders would still like being read picture books, but I wonder if they would prefer looking at novels to learn about writing craft. I also started thinking, how could you really do something like this with younger students? Would they be capable of picking out the things that writers do? I think it would be interesting to see this kind of lesson in action, because even though Ray is describing her process in chapter 6, I still would like to see how it could work. I have never been taught this way, as I'm sure none of us have, but I think that this is actually a really cool way to teach writing and to encourage creativity.

Sorry if it sounds like I'm just thinking out loud... but that's exactly what I'm doing. Let me know what you guys think!