(Page 130) “…even when students understand the purpose behind their writing, they often give little thought to who their audience might be.”
I think many students figure that the teacher is the one who is going to be reading and grading the assignment, so she/he is the only audience to whom the work should be written. If we only give the “fake” assignments that Gallagher writes about (i.e. the kinds of writing that is never seen in the real world), then why would students ever write to an audience other than the teacher? By exposing students to those real-world writings and examining why they were written, they can see the possibility of writing to someone else.
Gallagher gives many strategies to use to get students to write better so that they are writing for someone other than the head of the class. I think several of them can easily transfer to disciplines other than English. What if students bought in their lab reports for others to analyze (RAG Competitions, p. 133) or the teacher highlights the best parts of the lab reports to share with the class (Golden Lines, p. 131)? I know lab reports are lengthy—I don’t think the golden line thing has to be done in five minutes as Gallagher describes. It could be done as the teacher grades the reports; she could then use the lines as examples when students write the next report.
I also thought that “Another Set of Eyes” (p. 137) strategy would work well for those of you who work closely in subject areas, such as US History or Physical Science. When I used to score the practice HSAP tests while I was still in the classroom, I never scored my own students. I wanted someone else to score their writing for a couple of reasons. One, I felt like they needed feedback from someone other than me, so they could see what someone else thought of their writing. Two, it allowed me to look at how others viewed their writing—I could see if I was overlooking something and could look for commonalities (good or bad) in their work.
On a side note, is it a sign that I have overused my copy of this book when I have a chunk of pages fall out?!? Pages 83-88 sure did fall out when I opened my book tonight. I thinking that’s a good thing!
Ooooh… I like those suggestions about the other eyes. At the ninth grade level, the lab reports are not lengthy, so it would not be cumbersome to do the golden lines. I actually took a lot of notes in my book on this chapter. I like the “Ever Wonder Why” ideas, I know he introduced this in an earlier chapter, but I really like it. I was thinking giving them the topics of study for an interim period and letting them come up with questions to investigate for that interim - same idea with the “Myth of the Boring Topic”.
ReplyDeleteI think the Five Strategies to Create “Friday Night Lights” Outside the Classroom were useful for me. It should be easy enough for me to incorporate the first strategy: Apply a Required Writing Standard to the Real World. They could write about seat belt laws, environmental impact of chemical pollutions, applications of nuclear technology.
I also liked the second strategy “Another Set of Eyes” – have the kids select pieces to post that they are proud of, keep a notebook of collected works. Heck, we even sometimes write poems and do other posters and stuff that we could keep a “scrap book” for “posterity”.
Campus Displays sound great too – maybe on the freshman hall we can have a writing wall of fame. Hmm... submissions from all subject areas? Each teacher submits an award winner each grading period? That could be neat.
Writing contests – oh writing contests. My husband does essay contests in his seventh grade science class all the time. I had done a few in the past with marine science, but never with physical science. I’m thinking about setting our media specialists (or former literacy coach) on a mission to help me find science-related essay contests. Could be fun.
OK, and the last one: Create Public Readings – not really wild about this one, so maybe four out of five isn’t too bad!
And to your P.S. – I know what you mean, except mine isn’t with these books, but my Lord of the Rings Trilogy is held together with paper clips and rubber bands.