CI5461: Week 1

Thinking about teaching writing in the high school has always been a little bit overwhelming for me. I've thought about teaching literature and about what it means to have students think critically about it and talk about it in class... but I've never really thought about helping them to write about it. Or write about anything else for that matter.

So far, the reading for this class that has helped me to think about it in the most concrete terms was the article by Barbara Carney. This article, entitled "Process Writing and the Secondary School Reality: A Compromise," spoke to teaching the writing process. For me, the most important idea from this article was that of student ownership. Giving students choices is a huge part of making an assignment or activity engaging for them. It makes them feel like they have a chance at being good at what they're doing in class if they have been struggling, or makes them feel like they control the activity and the outcome. This is important in getting them interested in the activity from the start and it keeps them from simply giving up when it gets difficult. If they have invested in the piece of writing, they are more likely to succeed-- both academically and personally.

Also, the idea of student choice and ownership directly relates to the idea of differentiation that came up in CI5481: Developments inTeaching English and Speech today. Students can choose a writing activity or prompt which suits their individual needs. For example, one student may choose to write about the given topic in the form of a poem, whereas another student may feel more comfortable writing about the same topic in paragraph form. Also, various aspects of the same topic might be chosen in order to accomodate a range of ability or understanding. (Character, setting, or plot in of the same novel, for example.)

Another important idea in the Carney article was that of teaching students how to peer edit. Particularly "Higher Order Concerns" and "Lower Order Concerns." It's good for students to know how to recognize and fix things like grammar and spelling, but it's also important for them to recognize that the thesis, tone, and organization are much more important for conveying their ideas-- which is ultimately the purpose of writing. Once the students have a grasp of these concepts and understand what to look for and how to talk about one anothers' papers, I think they begin to take the writing and revising process more seriously because they know their audience and have a desire to please them. Once again, this kind of ownership is what it takes to make writing interesting and exciting to secondary students.

This week's resource:
I chose a website that has a number of writing prompts as this week's resource because it gives both me and my students a place to start. I like how it is organized by categories such as: expository, persuasive, descriptive, narrative, et cetera. Also, each writing prompt has an interactive model essay, which would help students prepare for a standardized writing test (which, as we all know, is so important to districts these days...)!