There's a myth in public schools that just because some of us chose English as a major, we must know all about how to teach reading and writing and therefore it should be left up to us. But Schmoker paints a very realistic picture of the college background of English majors--there are classes on Romanticism and Modernism, British lit and American lit, and even AIDS in literature. There are some great classes, but none of them prepare us for how to deal with the student that has made it to the 11th grade and still can't write (or simply won't write) a complete sentence. There's usually one reading class for education majors--Reading in the Content Area--but its not necessarily taught by someone trained in literacy itself. As an English major, I had one class in writing for secondary students, so I can't imagine non-ELA majors had much more. We come to public schools unprepared for what we are going to face, and if Schmoker is hitting the nail on the head, we avoid the situation as much as possible. We don't assign writing to our students. But when you have 150 of them, who has time to assign and grade all that writing?
Instead of examining all the things that are getting in our way of assigning writing to students, let's look closely at what we are doing write and what we might be able to do in the future. This year, sophomores were trained in the HSAP rubric and then graded their own writing in preparation for the test. (I guess we'll see in the fall how successful the experiment was.) What else can we do to move our literacy focus over to incorporate writing? It has to become a community effort, this teaching of reading and writing, if we are to ever see results, so what can we do as a community?
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8 comments:
I think Dianne's comments reflect why some teachers are afraid to incorporate more writing in the classroom. If English teachers have trouble with student writing, then how does any other teacher respond? It can be intimidating to try and grade a student's paper when the student doesn't write in complete sentences. My first instinct is to help but sometimes I don't know what to do or say. I found it interesting to read:
"There are some great classes, but none of them prepare us for how to deal with the student that has made it to the 11th grade and still can't write (or simply won't write) a complete sentence."
So, now that we know we need to incorporate more writing, how do we do this? Well, I think it would be great to work with English teachers. I have said this before, but I'll say it again. My example is about the book Animal Farm. I know some teachers use it for English (not sure what grade). I also know Animal Farm parallels the Russian Revolution. Why not teach Animal Farm at the same time social studies teachers teach the Russian Revolution. It could be a team teaching type of experience. The students could write about how the characters in the book relate to real-life characters of the Russian Revolution. The English teachers could grade on grammar while the social studies teacher grades on content. That's just an example but I think we have to brainstorm ideas like this to get more writing in our classes. I think it's important to show students that writing and reading goes across the curriculum. It's not just for English classes.
I beleive in PE and Human Growth we are trying to incorporate more writting. I think it can be intimidating, but rewarding at the the same time. In Human growth we could team teach and do a paper on communicable diseases. Here the student would be learning the proper language and puncuatiuon from english teachers and learning about diseases from health teachers. We also have them writting in their learning logs. This incorporates Pen in Hand from the precvious chapter. The kids are writting down important facts of what they had learned that day. I think we are doing somethings here that have been very helpful to our students and we will see some positive results.
I try to incorporate "short" writing during instruction--a quick paragraph to summarize a story or poem, two or three sentences to answer a question before responding outloud, journal writing at the beginning of the period. The paper load can get unmanageable for teachers if you required longer writing.
Perhaps one way to incorporate more writing is to use blogs as everyday writing tools for classes; however, that is not always possible because of accessibility. Blogs, dialogue journals, and written conversations are ways to give students other audiences besides the teacher--other forms of feedback besides teachers' grades. That would certainly reduce the paper load on the teacher, and it would give students the opportunity to write for real audiences and authentic purposes. I think one thing that may perhaps make students resistant to writing anything at all is that the writing we require is "fake" writing and has no other audience besides the teacher.
I wonder if we as a faculty had some common forms of writing to do in every class--reading logs, learning logs, blogs, etc.--so that students understood that writing is a tool in all areas, not just the English class. Just a thought.
I'm with Mr. Hughes on this one. If English teachers struggle, the rest of us probably do give up. I remember the student teaching experience from many years ago. I was a French major and had to teach a ninth grade English class along with the French. Now, remember, math is my minor! I was told by my supervising teacher that I'd be teaching Great Expectations. I don't think I'd ever read it before! What a struggle for me and the students! Then, when I came to Newberry High for my first year of teaching, I was again given a ninth grade English class. Not once that year did anyone offer to help me decide what or how to teach anything. I still shudder when I look back to those experiences.
Over the years, I have developed a bit more confidence in at least assigning written work. I have learned as a non-English teacher to grade more holistically and not get bogged down in the grammar too much. One thing that made this happen was the simple fact that in many instances no two English teachers would agree on the grammar anyway. English teachers, correct me if I'm wrong on this! I have given written assignments to different English teachers and gotten different suggestions from each teacher...
I think the main thing we can do is to continually encourage our good readers and writers to share their work with their peers. We used to publish a literary magazine with short stories, poems, etc. that our students wrote. Our newspaper used to come out much more often with examples from our students. I applaud the efforts of the media specialists in having poetry jams and our literacy coach in pushing the baker's dozen. These types of school recognition can serve to highlight the benefits of both reading and writing.
Writing, it's tough, of course it's not the easiest thing for some. Many of our students find writing difficult and painful. Like me, I find it difficult to express myself, thoughts, and feelings with pen and paper and I think early in my teaching career I feared using writing in my classroom. But I think it wasn't because of my fear of writing but a fear of not covering material (standards). I think in history classes we as teachers get anchored down by facts, get that material fed to your students, fill their heads with the material for the test. I can not count how many times I've heard, "I don't have the time, must get through the material before the EOC"
But since I have no EOC or PACT I've learned how valuable reading and writing is. I have found that students don't mind reading and more importanly they like to write. Given the opportunity they like to read and discuss text and even write on the subject, especially if the discussion leads to disagreement. Maybe it's me, but could it be that teachers feel they must wade through material, pour material into students for fear of not preparing them for tests that determins if the teacher was sucessful or not. I can remember when I first started teaching hearing how you have to keep students moving and working, especially with their hands, could this attitude have led to the "Crayola Curriculum? I know this much, I thought college was easier than high school and I think it was because I spent my time READING, WRITING, and DISCUSSING material.
As I said in my last post, I'm planning to focus a lot more on writing next year as well as critical reading. As a 1st year teacher, I see many gaps in what I've tried to do with my students this year. Weaning the kids away from mind-numbingly dull worksheets is a difficult task because the students will ask "why do I have to do this" on anything that isn't a worksheet. No matter how many times you try to explain the need for good reasoning skills or the need to be able to detect bias and inconsistency in any type of argument (written or otherwise), they students don't care. Legitimate reasons don't resonate with them; tell them it's for a grade and the complaining is over.
However, one successful attempt at legitimate, formal, thoughtful writing was based off of Animal Farm. When trying to get my students to write 5 paragraph essays, I realized that these kids didn't understand the basics of sentences, paragraphs, main ideas, supporting facts (NOT OPINIONS), etc. So, I made a chart that broke down the essay into a 5 sentence paragraph. We worked for several days on this activity. The students worked individually, with me, and within groups to create their paragraph. We close read 2 pages of the text to find our examples (they had to quote), created a valid thesis and a valid conclusion (the hardest parts), and filled in the middle with our 3 facts (quotes). The kids did amazingly well on this assignment. They each had to do 3 drafts of this one paragraph. Even so, many of them made careless punctuation mistakes which lowered their grades(which I should have done a lesson on to correct, but did not). The formatting and content were very well done.
Although, the negative side of that experience was realizing just how ill-prepared my students are for high school, much less college. Many of them cannot explain the difference between a subject and a verb, much less analyze a text in writing.
I think the best thing that we can do for our students is take baby steps. We often expect them to simply turn in amazing written works simply because we assigned them and went over a rubric. No. The students need practice in smaller chunks before they get to the longer essays and research papers. You learn to crawl before you walk, so the students need to learn to create meaningful, interesting, and thoughtful sentences and paragraphs before we turn them loose on larger assignments.
I agree with Diane's comments. We must all see the value of authentic reading and writing instruction in all curriculum areas. We must make a concentrated effort to constantly question ourselves as educators as to whether our lessons have authentic value and that we spend ample time modeling lessons. We must be as Diane says, "More stubborn than our students" and not become frustrated in our mission to impact the lives of students.
I especially found interesting the pen in hand concept to deal with higher order thinking skills while reading. I always read nonfiction with pen and pencil, yet, we tell students they can't mark in textbooks. I know we can use the sticky pad, but this just is not as effective for me.
Ms. Hartness, was this an intended pun or a typo..."let's look closely at what we are doing write"? ;-)
The what we are doing "write" is actually making an effort to put the reading/writing into our rooms...discussing options and lessons...taking a hard cold look at what we do! We’ve got to start somewhere! Having come to teaching from a different industry, writing has been my mental weakness. My final paper for my Masters was not a "traditional, include a thesis statement, follow MLA format, footnote everything" type of document...think organic, free flowing, conversational type of dialogue [my then young dogs' lack of leash etiquette made the "published" paper].
When I actually started here, I was so scattered and shell-shocked that I felt lucky if I got to work on time AND had my content’s facts right, lol! As I've tried more writing assignments over the years, I’ve utilized some of the greatest assets we at NHS have….our Lit Coach and English teachers! I’ve worked with Dianne on writing assignments and have even had other former English teachers co-grade essays to help me build up my experience and understanding of writing rubrics. Donielle mentioned “baby-steps” - maybe the first big step is to get more teachers taking the baby-steps in our planning.
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