Writing and Representing

The main goal as a teacher is to teach that writing can be enjoyed.  If you can teach your students to enjoy writing they won’t see writing as a chore and will write more in their everyday lives. I agree with the IRP that the more you write the better you read, but more importantly, writing on its own is beneficial to students as it allows children to “express themselves, clarify their thinking, communicate ideas, and integrate new information into their knowledge base “ (IRP).  As a teacher you cannot sit in front of the class and teach how to enjoy writing, you have to teach in a way that lets the students to experience first hand the joys of writing.  The best way to do this is to create a good writing environment, one that uses and teaches many different writing strategies.

My Ideal Writing Environment

Like Raffaella Montemurro, from the textbook I believe that “good writing comes from reading good literature.” Therefore it is very important to have a learning environment that has a wealth of novels, picture books, and poetry.  These are great resources for students to use when they need writing ideas.  Writing ideas such as characters, settings, conflicts, theme, writing styles or plots. (Bainbridge 2009)

I also feel the classroom environment needs to be one that is supportive.  Students need to feel comfortable; this will allow them not to get hung up on mistakes. Through class discussion we learned that girls often have a perfectionist attitude and will not go on until each word is spelt correctly (Robin Stevenson).  This is very detrimental to the writing process, as the student’s end up not being able to freely write and communicate their thoughts. There are two teachable strategies I think that are important to overcome a scenario like this.

The first is to have rule-less, nonjudgmental, free writing opportunities in the classroom.  An example we discussed in class and that is in the textbook is the “Think Books” and “Journals.”  It allows children to write freely and as the book states, “write for learning.”  This means that they are learning without knowing, as writing freely in journals allows students to practice their writing skills and formulating their thoughts. 

 The article, The Reading–Science Learning–Writing Connection: Breakthroughs, Barriers, and Promise by William G. Holliday and the textbook also express the importance of having journals in other subjects other then English. Research has proven that writing out math and science procedures and questions allows students to make more sense of how they reached the answer and the student is more likely to remember the steps. For that reason I feel that intergrading journals cross circular is very valuable.

 

Another great use of journals is for the teacher to use them to evaluate students understanding, see common popular topics among students, and informal documentation of students writing ability through the year. (Bainbridge 2009)

The second strategy is to teach students that writing requires a lot of revision and that the first draft is never perfect. I think it is very important to portray to the students that even professional writers go through many revisions and drafts before they reach the final results. The textbook describes this best by saying, “There is no such thing as a finished piece of writing. As they think, and as they think and receive feedback, they revise, develop new ideas, begin new pieces, share old ones and continue their development,” and “The writing process is spiral not linear.” (Bainbridge 2009) It is also important to teach this concept by modeling either yourself or inviting local authors into the class. 

Another aspect of being supportive, which leads to better enjoyment, is providing students with some autonomy in their writing.  This can be as simple as letting the children choose the book they write about or any general topic they are interested in.  The textbook expresses that this is very important. Stating that autonomy allows the students to bridge what they already know with what they have learned, resulting in an overall better understanding.  When a student cares about what they write they are usually more motivated and comfortable to write. Often this means allowing students to write about their own experiences. The book, Love That Dog is a very good example about a teacher allowing the student to make poems about his own life.  At first he couldn’t write anything, but once she showed him that the writing he already enjoys doing, about his own life experiences can in fact be used as poems he was able to conceptualize that he too, could be a poet. 

The teacher in the book, Love That Dog also allowed the boy to not write his poems in the ‘conventional’ poem-writing format.  This brings me to another strategy that teachers should use to support their students and encourage them to enjoy writing.  Giving students the opportunity to express themselves in different ways. The PLO’s give teachers this freedom, as they do not specify specifically writing formats the teacher needs to use. For example the grade three PLO’s are: “C7 - use writing and representing to express personal responses and opinions about experiences and texts “ or “ C8 - use writing and representing to extend thinking.” (IRP) Allowing students to choose different voices of writing (expression, poetic or transitional), and/or forms of writing (narrative, expressive, informational, nonfictions, comic strips) will result in better end results and interest in writing. Furthermore, this strategy of options will directly correlates with the overall writing purpose of the IRP, which is “Write and represent to create a variety of meaningful personal, informational, and imaginative texts.”

More options also foster children’s abilities to be more creative in their writing. In the article, Structure and Freedom: Achieving Balanced Writing Curriculum by Mara Casey and Stephen Hemenway, Page reflected her lost passion for writing because she no longer had a choice in the way she expressed her thoughts.  The process and format was the same each time and this made writing feel as though she was working on a production line. She felt forced to do the same thing over and over. Page also expressed that the structured topics and lack of freedom to express her views lead her to write for the teacher, and no longer to please herself, resulting in a loss of enjoyment for writing. Page’s example is what is seen often in schools today. Pages main advice, which I agree with, is to have a balance between structure and creativity to keep the children motivated and interested in writing.      

Lastly, the IRP uses the word “meaningful” in describing the overall purpose of teaching writing. Which I think is a very important element when teaching. If the text the student produced is meaningful they will be able to look back and be proud of what they wrote. I feel that meaningful and enjoyment, go hand in hand.  If the students enjoy what they are writing, they will have more passion that will lead to a meaningful outcome. Therefore, all the strategies mentioned above can be used to make the students writing and representing more meaningful.