Teaching Adolescent Writers: Chapter Four; Content Area Writing: Chapter Six

Teaching Adolescent Writers
(Page 74) “Voluminous reading alone does not make the writer, but those students who are readers come to the writing task with a marked advantage.”
I love the basketball metaphor Gallagher uses to support this thought to remind us that we have to provide explicit writing instruction for our students. Even when I was a teenager I was able to make the connection that people who read a lot write well, though no one ever told me this. I based my scientific analysis on one subject—my sister who was a voracious reader (it amazed me she could read an entire book in two hours) and wrote very well…in fact she and her friends wrote stories just for fun. (Ironically, she was the less scholarly of the two of us, though she has written many a complaint letter and received free meals because of them. Even today she often writes letters to editor, but I digress…) It is interesting that some people aren’t able to transfer all of that reading into writing. I can think of a student I taught who was an avid reader—always had a book in her hand—but her writing left much to be desired. I know of an adult who reads all the time but when he has to put something in writing, he needs someone to edit it for him. I think the point Gallagher makes, though, is that these type of readers-not-so-great-writers will learn more easily when given specific writing instruction because they have so many examples to pull from.

Content Area Writing
(Page 122) “But if they believe (writing’s) main purpose is just to display what they’ve memorized, or worse, to call them out on things they didn’t get, they’ll always play it safe, take few chances, and stick with what they already know.”
This goes along with what we talked about with Britton’s continuum—that when Britton did his research, he found that the majority of students were doing transactional writing, which mainly included taking tests and spitting out the “right” answer to teachers. What are students really learning if they’re just regurgitating what the teacher said? Students (and we) can learn so much more if we widen our criteria and give options for writing. Daniels et al seem to reiterate what we’ve read with Gallagher—model, model, model! I like how this chapter breaks down how content teachers can support the writing process in their classrooms. The whole idea of teaching writing as a process can be scary if you’re not an English teacher (and maybe even to some English teachers), but we’re given practical ways to accomplish the task in this chapter. I like how some of the strategies we’ve explored before for the purpose of reading were twisted a bit to cater to developing writing. There’s definitely a lot covered in this chapter; it’s one to bookmark and refer to in the future.

Teaching Adolescent Writers: Chapter Three; Content Area Writing: Chapter Five

Teaching Adolescent Writers
(Page 48) “They don’t need a teacher who assigns writing; they need a teacher who demonstrates what good writers do.”
How many times have we said about a student, “That kid can’t write”? Although we don’t have a definitive answer, what are the odds that same kid was repeatedly taught HOW to write? Just as with reading, we often expect students coming to high school knowing how to write—that’s something that’s taught in elementary school. Or, if it does need to be taught at high school, it’s the English teacher’s job. Just as the English teacher can’t possibly teach every kind of reading, she/he can’t teach every kind of writing. I surely don’t know the first thing about how to write a lab report. The thing is writing isn’t easy and our own work isn’t always pretty, so it makes us nervous to share our own with students—they might think it’s hard for us. But that’s all the more reason to share! Let the kids see that we—college graduates—struggle with writing at times ourselves and show them what we do to get a finished product. Students often think good writers (and especially professional writers) don’t have any difficulty, and a final draft is instantly produced. I attended a panel discussion made up of four writers of different genres while I was at the WIN conference last week, and they were asked how many revisions they make to their work. While they said it varies, the lowest number of revisions by one of the professional writers was 2-3 while the highest was 10-11. How much more approachable does a person become when you discover he or she has difficulty doing something? I find myself walking on eggshells a bit when I think someone is an expert. But if I could have that expert break down the process and show me that things don’t come so easily to him, I can learn so much more from him and am much more willing to show my flaws. Last year we discovered how important it is to model our reading (a la the think aloud); I think we’re discovering it’s just as important to do the same practice with our writing.

Content Area Writing
(Page 118) “The lesson here, as we think about content-area writing, is that kids need examples, models, templates, samples of what good writing in the field looks like.”
If we rely on the English teachers to teach all writing, we’ll end up with students who only know how to respond to literature or the HSAP rubric. Reading and writing go hand-in-hand. We have to give students plenty of examples of good writing in our content so that they have a variety of models. The writing requirements on SAT and AP are tied more to content, so we all need to make sure students are learning how to write like historians or scientists.

I assigned this chapter as introduction for producing public writing. I realize there aren’t a ton of different ideas to respond to within this chapter, but I think it gives a good overview of writing in the classroom.