(Page 9) “It’s one thing to assign writing to students; it’s another to teach them how to write.”
I think this is a huge problem with students. My theory is that often when teachers give students a writing assignment, the teacher has in his or her head what that assignment should like but never parlays it to the student. Sure, the assignment seems simple, but so does anything that you have straight in your mind. All writing is not created equal. The things you do for a persuasive essay are different from those you to for a lab report or reasearch paper on the Holocaust. When giving a writing assignment, we must explain to the students how to do it…we can’t expect them to learn all types of writing in the English classroom because the English teacher isn’t an expert in all types of writing! By scaffolding writing assignments, we can make students better writers. I think those of you who teach resource or and/or on a freshman team are at an advantage because you get to see your students all year long, so you can “grow” them over a longer period of time. That’s not to say progress can’t be made in a semester, but it is a little more challenging. But, hey, what’s teaching if it’s not a challenge?
I think we all assume too much. In a perfect world where kids are motivated, have supportive, nurturing parents at home who can meet all of their physical and emotional needs they would be prepared for our classes at the level we assume. And, in the day of standardized testing we are all stretched too thin that we seem to lose a lot of our best practices. Before EOCs, I used to incorporate a lot more reading and writing; I kept thinking about that as I read this chapter. I’m glad to have the opportunity to really sit and think about not just what I should be doing in my class, but what I really want to be doing. I want to help make my students better all around and more prepared for college. I have high expectations for them, and by goodness I’m going to drag them there kicking and screaming if I have to.
ReplyDeleteCoincidentally, my students had a lab report to write this week. I really thought about how I would present this to them in light of what I’ve read. I made a conscious effort to give them a purpose for their writing and to describe the differences between this sort of technical writing and a more creative or persuasive assignment they may have in English class. We went through each section of the report together step by step and discussed the purpose of each section and the content that should be included. Originally, Amanda and I had planned on only requiring one formal lab report each nine weeks, but I think we both might be including more. Well, if not a full report, at least a thorough conclusion summary section.
Well, my brainstorm notebook is now full of lots of writing ideas, and who knows, maybe it will help save me some clicks! :-)
I’m glad that I don’t have a rigid curriculum to cover. I love the fact that I can work reading and writing into such a huge portion of my class time. That being said, there still isn’t time in a year to teach the kids how to write well. Motivation is sadly lacking. For essays, most students write something once and they are ‘finished’ with it. They understand the need to correct for grammar and spelling, but almost all seem incapable of imagining any substantive revisions. Generally it appears they are best at writing for a short-answer question because they only need to focus attention on one particular piece of information. They aren’t able to write analytically. They can’t tie things together. Even when asked to write their own reactions to a something (that they can very easily talk about), most can’t formulate a coherent written answer that contains more than one sentence. If “writing makes you smarter”, then we need to do a lot more writing! On page 21, he says that more than 50% of college freshmen are unable to produce papers relatively free of language errors or analyze argument or synthesize information. Scary, but not surprising. Since most of the kids I see are not college-bound, their writing skills are much lower. One of my goals this year is for students to understand that they truly need to work hard at writing (and reading). I made overheads of the Stampede of Bulls question and the Literacy Stampede question and shared them with my tenth graders. They had a good laugh about the scenario in Wyoming and then seemed to recognize the severity of what could happen to them if they couldn’t read and write well enough to keep up with the world. I don’t know if that will translate into them being able to sustain the necessary effort for a whole year – but I’ve got to do something!
ReplyDeleteLet me begin by offering my apologies to everyone for being late with my blog entry. Yes, Diane this is a reread for me, but that is no excuse for being late. Stephanie and Anna, I enjoyed reading your entries. I look forward to the opportunity to have a dialogue with you and some of the other teachers that are new to blogging about this particular book.
ReplyDelete“Too many teachers see themselves solely as teachers of their content; our students would be much better prepared for the literacy stampede if all teachers recognized that developing the writing skills of their students is as important as dispensing information.” (p. 11) I made some notes about what I wanted to blog about a week ago and never got around to it. It turns out that was a good thing, because this past week during the Career Quest, I got a real life example that I can share with all of you and my students. The speaker in my room is a research lab manager in the Marine Science Department at USC. In explaining to the students what courses they should take while in high school, she made a point of emphasizing English classes, especially those that require a lot of writing. When a student asked her about this, she explained how you have to write up the research you conduct in the field, and she also mentioned persuasive writing when she talked about grants. She told the students that a lot of the funding for their research would come from grants, and that you had to be a good writer in order to write a grant that had a chance of being funded. Can we then infer that if Marine Science majors need to be good writers, that other science majors or majors in other disciplines might also require excellent writing skills? So, yes, it is important for all teachers to develop the writing skills of their students. We have to keep in mind that in science, the writing may be more technical than it is English, but who better to support that type of writing than the teacher demanding those types of skills in the classroom.
I think that the two lists in this chapter are worth sharing with the rest of the Airport faculty. Both the top ten writing wrongs in the secondary school and the eight reasons for writing are important for all faculty members to keep in mind. After all, we are an Exemplary Writing School. Or are we?