Content Area Writing
(Page 24) “For now we’ll just tell you flatly: the intensive correction of student papers does not work; it has never worked and it never will work. Kids’ writing does not improve when teachers cover their papers with corrections, no matter how scrupulous and generous that kind of feedback may seem.”
It does seem like we, as teachers, would have figured this out a long time ago. I am just as guilty as the next teacher of collecting my students’ share of final drafts, making corrections on them, and giving them back, expecting that the students would improve their writing based on my comments. But let’s flashback to our own high school (or possibly even college) days and think about papers we turned in to the teacher. Upon getting the paper back with lovely marks all over it, did you ever once decide to take their suggestions and revise the paper, so that you’d have a better final draft? Did you make note of the grammatical corrections and from that point on never make that mistake again? Of course not! If you were like me, you just read through the comments and stuck the paper in your notebook, never to be looked at again. This idea of waiting until the final draft to give students feedback does seem a bit off base when you think about it. Wouldn’t it more beneficial for students to get extensive feedback after the first (and/or second) draft, so they can actually improve their writing? This is a concept we’re going to explore even more in the weeks ahead. I know this chapter is on writing to learn, but I just wanted to touch on this idea of making endless comments on student work that the authors write about in the shaded section…I know y’all will have lots to say about the idea of writing to learn.
Teaching Adolescent Writers
(Page 29) “What good is a curriculum that is a mile wide an inch deep?…Shouldn’t we concern ourselves a little less with getting students to recite facts and figures and concern ourselves more with helping them develop these cornerstone skills they will need to lead literate lives?”
Finally, a well-respected person puts this thought in writing! I think students are missing out on some great instructional opportunities because there’s so much material to cover that teachers feel like they don’t have time for some activities because they need to get to all of the standards. I think Gallagher brings up a really good point that reminds me of that “30 years from now no one will care what clothes you wore…” poster. We’ve got to make sure our students can read, write, and think, so they can be productive citizens in the world. One of the main things I remember Elin Keene (Mosaic of Thought) saying when I attended her best practices seminar was that kids who think well, test well. Maybe if we focus on teaching our kids to read, write and think, the test will just take care of itself!
(Page 24) “For now we’ll just tell you flatly: the intensive correction of student papers does not work; it has never worked and it never will work. Kids’ writing does not improve when teachers cover their papers with corrections, no matter how scrupulous and generous that kind of feedback may seem.”
It does seem like we, as teachers, would have figured this out a long time ago. I am just as guilty as the next teacher of collecting my students’ share of final drafts, making corrections on them, and giving them back, expecting that the students would improve their writing based on my comments. But let’s flashback to our own high school (or possibly even college) days and think about papers we turned in to the teacher. Upon getting the paper back with lovely marks all over it, did you ever once decide to take their suggestions and revise the paper, so that you’d have a better final draft? Did you make note of the grammatical corrections and from that point on never make that mistake again? Of course not! If you were like me, you just read through the comments and stuck the paper in your notebook, never to be looked at again. This idea of waiting until the final draft to give students feedback does seem a bit off base when you think about it. Wouldn’t it more beneficial for students to get extensive feedback after the first (and/or second) draft, so they can actually improve their writing? This is a concept we’re going to explore even more in the weeks ahead. I know this chapter is on writing to learn, but I just wanted to touch on this idea of making endless comments on student work that the authors write about in the shaded section…I know y’all will have lots to say about the idea of writing to learn.
Teaching Adolescent Writers
(Page 29) “What good is a curriculum that is a mile wide an inch deep?…Shouldn’t we concern ourselves a little less with getting students to recite facts and figures and concern ourselves more with helping them develop these cornerstone skills they will need to lead literate lives?”
Finally, a well-respected person puts this thought in writing! I think students are missing out on some great instructional opportunities because there’s so much material to cover that teachers feel like they don’t have time for some activities because they need to get to all of the standards. I think Gallagher brings up a really good point that reminds me of that “30 years from now no one will care what clothes you wore…” poster. We’ve got to make sure our students can read, write, and think, so they can be productive citizens in the world. One of the main things I remember Elin Keene (Mosaic of Thought) saying when I attended her best practices seminar was that kids who think well, test well. Maybe if we focus on teaching our kids to read, write and think, the test will just take care of itself!
7 comments:
Content Area Writing Chapter Two
Teaching Adolescent Writers Chapter Two
In response to what Diane wrote, yes, the section about correcting every mistake in every paper a student turns in felt like it was written just for me, sort of like the sermon in church Sunday mornings sometimes. I am one of those people who sees every glaring mistake and correct it. How else will we create better writers, right? WRONG!!! I do believe that correcting grammatical mistakes has its place in writing instruction, but it’s just a small of the puzzle when it comes to improving writing. I loved these chapters because they talked about writing as a way to communicate thinking. One of the keys to learning is to get kids thinking. Reading and writing are vehicles for thinking; and if we give kids the opportunity to read and write and, therefore, think-- really think (not just regurgitate information), those high stakes tests might just take care of themselves.
The voice in these texts is still entertaining. The mention of Utopia Junior High and Nirvana High School (29, Teaching Adolescent Writers) made me LOL. On the same page, the points made by using Lord of the Flies and Of Mice and Men and how it won’t matter if twenty years from now kids can remember the symbolism or foreshadowing, but it will matter whether they can write well enough for a college admissions essay or a letter to their congressmen was great. (Reminded me of Janet Allen and Death of a Salesman.) I also liked the strategy of attacking the prompt. I see examples of kids not understanding what I want them to write about in my classroom even when I think I’ve been very clear. Again, it’s about getting them to really think sometimes. Pam, I am sure you liked the basketball analogy in this chapter.
In Content Area Writing, I had to laugh about the list making part. I love lists but never really considered them to be writing. I think I have lofty ideas about what constitutes writing that I need to get over. And why did they reference the “English teacher with red pen in hand” (23) like that’s a bad thing to be? “Learners must act on information in order to understand, remember, and use it.” (26) So much of what we ask students to do has nothing to do with acting on information, nor do we ask them to really think sometimes. Things need to change.
Content Area Writing - p. 28
"WTLs give us starting points for new units; we have kids write to surface their prior knowledge, including their misconceptions, to activate their thinking, to set class and individual goals for an upcoming unit. Along the way, we use WTLs to help students stop and collect their thoughts, sort out ideas, notice and hold their thinking, review and readjust goals, and get ready to move ahead. Later in a unit, we use different kinds of short writings to help kids synthesize what they have learned, connect with others, compare notes, or plan projects or outlets for their learning."
I love this explanation of writing to learn activities. After hearing the emphasis on literacy practices across the curriculum in our High School That Work Presentation, I am pleased that we are going to spend some time on learning about and practicing these types of writing activities. As we work through and discuss different WTLs that we are using in our own classes, I think we need to find a way to share this information with our faculty members.
Teaching Adolescent Writers - p.31
Donald Murray says, "Writing is a skill, and students need to mess around with paints before they learn how to paint, plunk at a piano before they are taught scales, fool around with a basketball, get the feel of it, before they are put through a formal practice."
I can remember attending workshops on using math manipulatives while teaching math at Fulmer. One of the tips they always emphasized was letting students "play around" with the manipulatives before actually using them to practice a certain math skill. Also, all of the Newspaper in Education in literature says to give students time to free read the paper prior to using the newspapers for a specific skill lesson.
A quick response to Diane's posting about making endless comments on students' papers. I am on the fence on this one. With my own writing development, this is what my mother, a former English teacher, used to do to my own papers, and I learned quite well. At the same time, I do think all of those red marks are depressing to see. I think we need a balance. Pick one or two skills to focus on as you read a student's paper, and then emphasize what they did well.
I will admit that I am not close to 100% comfortable with teaching formal writing, grammar, editing, etc. but I really enjoyed both of these chapters and dare I say they made me more excited to do more writing with my students!
The quote Pam chose from Content Area Writing is definitely a great way to define all the writing we should/could be doing in our classrooms. The quote and the entire chapter puts the writing that we do on a daily basis in the forefront of our minds to show us what we can do with our students. We can take simple things like making lists and writing journals and transform them into meaningful writing strategies/activities to help deepen our students’ knowledge. Having many options of WTL can help fulfill the idea of “To get true learning power, kids must put ideas into their own words”. I think it’s essential for all teachers to learn ways to use WTL within their classrooms to really get students to understand the material.
I have to agree with Pam, again. I really enjoyed the quote from Teaching Adolescent Writers that Pam discussed; “Writing is a skill, and students need to mess around with paints before they learn how to paint, plunk at a piano before they are taught scales, fool around with a basketball, get the feel of it, before they are put through a formal practice." I highlighted it and wrote notes next to it. I think this “messing” around can be WTL that Content Area Writing talked about. I could use this idea to gear my students to use their personal writing journals to practice different types of writing: persuasive, expository, or factual.
Chapter 2 Content-Area Writing
Chapter 2 Teaching Adolescent Writers
I liked the entire chapter and was captivated by the specific strategies to help our students write to learn. I too had highlighted that bleeding all over our student�s papers with our powerful red pens was not working. In fact, in a recent study that I shared with my psychology students there are actually elementary schools who had asked their teachers not to use red because it was damaging to the emotions of the elementary students. Now I am not daft enough to buy into that research but I do think that it is senseless like Pam mentioned to wait until the final draft for correction.
I will probably stand out a little differently on this opinion but unlike Diane, when my English papers were returned from a professor and there were no red marks and a grade less than �A� I wanted to know why. I didn�t want a weak and vague answer I wanted to know how to improve and actually did complete a few re-writes�I know way too �A-type� personality. Like Pam, I feel that there is some merit to correcting a student�s work as they are able to edit it rather than waiting until their supposed best effort is before you and then take the opportunity to revise it for the students.
I also liked the WTL assignments can replace some of the whole class discussions that allow some of the students to be less than fully engaged. I find that Quick Writes are a very good means to assess whether the students actually understood the concepts of the day.
In the Gallagher book I loved the story of the portfolio idea of the idealist 1st year teacher. I agree that American children do not write enough and we are way too interested in coverage of a lot of material rather than mastery of a few key concepts. The statistics were very interesting as Diane had indicated earlier and once in particular that grabbed my eye was that the best incoming college freshmen writers are those who do the most writing in high school. The problem begins to be how we are going to make our teacher-student ration small enough to enable the teachers to actually give feedback much less have the time to read multiple drafts of each student�s writing. Having said this one statistic that was thrown in there (28) was that 75% of high school seniors are never given writing opportunities in social studies. With the literacy council calling for double the time allotted for students to write during the school day things will have to change within the modern classroom.
Content-Area Writing Chapter 2
“What we are doing in all these modest, everyday instances is using writing as a tool of thinking.”( pg. 21) WOW- all of those lists and brainstorming were actual thinking. I really love the idea of the WTL. I am sure that everyone uses this but do we really consider it writing. Or as a means of great thinking. I think that we have been selling ourselves short. It is not a published piece but our students are writing and thinking and isn’t that the important part. Like Claire, I never considered my many lists as a great source of writing. But one list does usually turn into another list. WTL’s also remind me of Type one writing from the Collins’ method. Remember, that is the easiest type of writing and one that every teacher should be using in their classroom. Once we get kids thinking, then we can open the door to other means of writing.
Teaching Adolescent Writers Chapter 2
I love this book too! Claire, I too howled about Utopia J.H. and Nirvana H.S. One fact that hit me hard was the stat on page 28- “…75% of high school seniors are never given writing assignments in social studies.” Amazing- and we wonder why these kids don’t write well when they enter the job force or go to college. Gallagher keeps emphasizing that we should teach our content through writing. I agree with Diane; maybe if we focus on the basics like reading and writing then maybe we would not feel so rushed to do everything! This is the chapter that I got the idea for the movie chart. Big help when watching a movie and recoding thoughts!
Red on returned papers. Boy bring on the flash backs. I jokingly tell my kids that red pens are banned from my classroom. As like Kelly, I am no where near good enough to know if a sentence is structured properly or if the comma is needed or not. I want my students to enjoy writing. I don't want them to view it as a bore or just another hoop they have to jump through to get a grade. I want my students to be thinking about their written responses. One thing that I do with my US Hist. kids is, when talking about advertising products in the late 1800's - early 1900's, is give them a product (ex. Toilet Tissue) and have them create an ad campaign for their product. It can be in any form, slogan/jingle. I have gotten some well thought out arguments for those products.
Feedback must be given to students during the writing process! I too am guilty of getting a final draft of something and then making corrections and giving it back to the student. I should have done that during the process so that what they turn in has already been revised and they have already made their corrections to. When I was in high school, once I turned something in… I was DONE. If they gave it back to me with revisions, I hardly looked at them and when I did look at them, I just shrugged them off because I had already turned it in and gotten a grade for it… Why re-do it. I feel as if I have cheated kids because I have often just taken their final draft and not assisted them in getting there. I truly do see now that it is much more important to help them correct their work earlier in the process than later.
“What good is a curriculum that is a mile wide an inch deep?…Shouldn’t we concern ourselves a little less with getting students to recite facts and figures and concern ourselves more with helping them develop these cornerstone skills they will need to lead literate lives?” I agree with Diane that I am glad to see someone actually put this in writing! I am one that truly believes that students need to be able to think for themselves and this will help them develop the skills they need to live literate lives. The book Hooray for Diffendoofer Day by Dr. Seuss is a great book that is about teaching kids to think and is about teachers who are driven by that and not just the curriculum. I always joke that I was a republican until I learned to think for myself (no offence to you republicans out there). I guess I was just taught exactly what to believe and was not given the liberty of being able to think for myself until years later. This is very important in all areas. If we teach our kids to think for themselves then they will be able to do much more independently and will test better and perform better in the classroom as well.
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