Coby's Reflection to Graves Chapters 9-11

In chapters nine to eleven of his book, Writing: Teacher’s and Children at Work, Donald Graves answers the most common questions that teachers have about his methods. He also talks about how to run a conference with students and what to ask them.

Chapter nine, the questions and answers section, shows that Graves has really thought about these problems. He looks deeply into many of the situations that are mentioned and realizes that the causes are usually apathy or fear. Graves talks about children who do not revise and states that they are usually apathetic about their topic and need help choosing a good one or they are such perfectionists that they are afraid to be seen revising their work. This stuck out in my mind because I have been on both sides of the spectrum before. In elementary school I would have to constantly revise and I thought that those who did not have to were smarter than I was. I never thought that they might have been too afraid to revise. In college I had a good English 100 professor and since then most of the papers I have scored high marks on were either revised once or not at all. This led me to stop desiring revision, not necessarily for reasons of shame or pride but, because I wanted to focus on projects for others classes. The long term effects are that I have a hard time getting myself to reread my work which has stumped my progress in writing as a hobby. Graves also makes me think of when I am in a writing slump and how that normally ends my interest in writing for anywhere from a few months to a whole year.

Chapters ten and eleven can be summed up with the words, body language, patience, and listening. These are the three things that Graves asks teachers to master as they grow in their conferencing skills. He also gives teachers different types of questions to ask during conferences with students. Personally I am glad to have examples of safe questions to ask students because I know from experience that one wrong question or statement will make a child’s face look grim and his or her head drift down in disappointment. Such a predicament is quite hard to get out of and the regret of those slipped words last for a while. My favorite part of this whole reading was when Graves said to grade children on their best revised piece and nothing else. This sure leaves a lot of freedom and flexibility in the teaching process while appeasing the assessment process.

All in all these are some great bits of information to know about when trying to utilize Graves’ methods in a classroom. I look forward to using these in real life.