Happy National Day on Writing! and an Award :)

Today is the second annual "National Day on Writing"! Started by NCTE, "The National Day on Writing" is a day where everyone -- students, teachers, learners, everyone-- is encouraged to write. Today is the day where you can and should write anything and everything. NCTE has created a National Gallery of Writing where anyone can submit any kind of writing. I encourage everyone out there in the blogosphere to write something today. Anything. Get your writing out there in the world. The piece of your heart that you contribute through writing will forever change the world around us. Make a difference, through writing. Visit the NCTE website for more information on "National Day on Writing 2010".

Today, I received my first Blogging Award ever-- The Cherry on Top Award! Thank you Teacher/Learner from Whatca' Readin', Books? for thinking of me for this award. It means a lot that ANYONE is reading this blog, especially teachers and lovers of books :)

Upon accepting this award, recipients are asked to answer the following question:

If you could go back and change one thing in your life,

would you and what would it be?

This might sound a little lame, but if I could change anything in my life it would be to start reading earlier. Now, I have a great passion for books but early in life I resented the fact that I had to read in school. I could have gained so much from reading more at an early age. I am trying to catch up now by reading as many books as I possibly can :)

Thoughts on Writing part 4

Writing and reading are related

Writing and reading are related. People who read a lot have a much easier time getting better at writing. In order to write a particular kind of text, it helps if the writer has read that kind of text. In order to take on a particular style of language, the writer needs to have read that language, to have heard it in her mind, so that she can hear it again in order to compose it.

Writing can also help people become better readers. In their earliest writing experiences, children listen for the relationships of sounds to letters, which contributes greatly to their phonemic awareness and phonics knowledge. Writers also must learn how texts are structured, because they have to create them. The experience of plotting a short story, organizing a research report, or making line breaks in a poem permits the writer, as a reader, to approach new reading experiences with more informed eyes.

Additionally, reading is a vital source of information and ideas. For writers fully to contribute to a given topic or to be effective in a given situation, they must be familiar with what previous writers have said. Reading also creates a sense of what one's audience knows or expects on a topic.

What does this mean for teaching?

One way to help students become better writers is to make sure they have lots of extended time to read, in school and out. Most research indicates that the easiest way to tap motivation to read is to teach students to choose books and other texts they understand and enjoy, and then to give them time in school to read them. In addition to making students stronger readers, this practice makes them stronger writers.

Students should also have access to and experience in reading material that presents both published and student writing in various genres. Through immersion in a genre, students develop an internalized sense of why an author would select a particular genre for a particular purpose, the power of a particular genre to convey a message, and the rhetorical constraints and possibilities inherent in a genre. Students should be taught the features of different genres, experientially not only explicitly, so that they develop facilities in producing them and become familiar with variant features. If one is going to write in a genre, it is very helpful to have read in that genre first.

Overall, frequent conversations about the connections between what we read and what we write are helpful. These connections will sometimes be about the structure and craft of the writing itself, and sometimes about thematic and content connections.

In order to do an excellent job of teaching into the connections of writing and reading, teachers need to understand at least these things:

• How writers read in a special way, with an eye toward not just what the text says but how it is put together.
• The psychological and social processes reading and writing have in common.
• The ways writers form and use constructs of their intended readers, anticipating their responses and needs.
• An understanding of text structure that is fluid enough to accommodate frequent disruptions

by the Writing Study Group of the NCTE Executive Committee, November 2004

http://www.ncte.org/positions/statements/writingbeliefs

Thoughts on Writing part 3

Writing is a tool for thinking

When writers actually write, they think of things that they did not have in mind before they began writing. The act of writing generates ideas. This is different from the way we often think of writers -- as getting ideas fixed in their heads before they write them down. The notion that writing is a medium for thought is important in several ways. It suggests a number of important uses for writing: to solve problems, to identify issues, to construct questions, to reconsider something one had already figured out, to try out a half-baked idea. This insight that writing is a tool for thinking helps us to understand the process of drafting and revision as one of exploration and discovery, and is nothing like transcribing from pre-recorded tape. The writing process is not one of simply fixing up the mistakes in an early draft, but of finding more and more wrinkles and implications in what one is talking about.

What does this mean for teaching?

In any writing classroom, some of the writing is for others and some of the writing is for the writer. Regardless of the age, ability, or experience of the writer, the use of writing to generate thought is still valuable; therefore, forms of writing such as personal narrative, journals, written reflections, observations, and writing-to-learn strategies are important.

In any writing assignment, it must be assumed that part of the work of writers will involve generating and regenerating ideas prior to writing them.

Excellence in teaching writing as thinking requires that the teacher understand:

• Varied tools for thinking through writing, such as journals, writers’ notebooks, blogs, sketchbooks, digital portfolios, listservs or online discussion groups, dialogue journals, double-entry or dialectical journals, and others.
• The kinds of new thinking that occur when writers revise.
• The variety of types of thinking people do when they compose, and what those types of thinking look like when they appear in writing.
• Strategies for getting started with an idea, or finding an idea when one does not occur immediately.

Writing grows out of many different purposes

Purposes for writing include developing social networks; engaging in civic discourse; supporting personal and spiritual growth; reflecting on experience; communicating professionally and academically; building relationships with others, including friends, family, and like-minded individuals; and engaging in aesthetic experiences.

Writing is not just one thing. It varies in form, structure, and production process according to its audience and purpose. A note to a cousin is not like a business report, which is different again from a poem. The processes and ways of thinking that lead up to these varied kinds of texts can also vary widely, from the quick single draft email to a friend to the careful drafting and redrafting of a legal contract. The different purposes and forms both grow out of and create various relationships between the writer and the potential reader, and relationships reflected in degrees of formality in language, as well as assumptions about what knowledge and experience is already shared, and what needs to be explained. Writing with certain purposes in mind, the writer focuses her attention on what the audience is thinking or believing; other times, the writer focuses more on the information she is organizing, or on her own thoughts and feelings. Therefore, the thinking, the procedures, and the physical format in writing all differ when writers’ purposes vary.

What does this mean for teaching?

Often, in school, students write only to prove that they did something they were asked to do, in order to get credit for it. Or, students are taught a single type of writing and are led to believe this type will suffice in all situations. Writers outside of school have many different purposes beyond demonstrating accountability, and they practice myriad types and genres. In order to make sure students are learning how writing differs when the purpose and the audience differ, it is important that teachers create opportunities for students to be in different kinds of writing situations, where the relationships and agendas are varied. Even within academic settings, the characteristics of good writing vary among disciplines; what counts as a successful lab report, for example, differs from a successful history paper, essay exam, or literary interpretation.

In order to teach for excellence about purposes in writing, teachers need to understand:

• The wide range of purposes for which people write, and the forms of writing that arise from those purposes.
• Strategies and forms for writing for public participation in a democratic society.
• Ways people use writing for personal growth, expression, and reflection and how to encourage and develop this kind of writing.
• Aesthetic or artistic forms of writing and how they are made. That is, the production of creative and literary texts, for the purposes of entertainment, pleasure, or exploration.
• Appropriate forms for varied academic disciplines and the purposes and relationships that create those forms.
• Ways of organizing and transforming school curricula in order to provide students with adequate education in varied purposes for writing.
• How to set up a course to write for varied purposes and audiences.

by the Writing Study Group of the NCTE Executive Committee, November 2004

http://www.ncte.org/positions/statements/writingbeliefs

Thoughts on Writing part 2

Writing is a process

Often, when people think of writing, they think of texts -- finished pieces of writing. Understanding what writers do, however, involves thinking not just about what texts look like when they are finished but also about what strategies writers might employ to produce those texts. Knowledge about writing is only complete with understanding the complex of actions in which writers engage as they produce texts. Such understanding has two aspects. First is the development, through extended practice over years, of a repertory of routines, skills, strategies, and practices, for generating, revising, and editing different kinds of texts. Second is the development of reflective abilities and meta-awareness about writing. This procedural understanding helps writers most when they encounter difficulty, or when they are in the middle of creating a piece of writing. How does someone get started? What do they do when they get stuck? How do they plan the overall process, each section of their work, and even the rest of the sentence they are writing right now? Research, theory, and practice over the past 40 years has produced a richer understanding of what writers do -- those who are proficient and professional as well as those who struggle.

Two further points are vital. To say that writing is a process is decidedly not to say that it should -- or can -- be turned into a formulaic set of steps. Experienced writers shift between different operations according to tasks and circumstances. Second, writers do not accumulate process skills and strategies once and for all. They develop and refine writing skills throughout their writing lives.

What does this mean for teaching?

Whenever possible, teachers should attend to the process that students might follow to produce texts -- and not only specify criteria for evaluating finished products, in form or content. Students should become comfortable with pre-writing techniques, multiple strategies for developing and organizing a message, a variety of strategies for revising and editing, and strategies for preparing products for public audiences and for deadlines. In explaining assignments, teachers should provide guidance and options for ways of going about it. Sometimes, evaluating the processes students follow -- the decisions they make, the attempts along the way -- can be as important as evaluating the final product. At least some of the time, the teacher should guide the students through the process, assisting them as they go. Writing instruction must provide opportunities for students to identify the processes that work best for themselves as they move from one writing situation to another.

Writing instruction must also take into account that a good deal of workplace writing and other writing takes place in collaborative situations. Writers must learn to work effectively with one another.

Teachers need to understand at least the following in order to be excellent at teaching writing as a process:

• The relationship between features of finished writing and the actions writers perform.
• What writers of different genres say about their craft.
• The process of writing from the inside, that is, what they themselves as writers experience in a host of different writing situations.
• Multiple strategies for approaching a wide range of typical problems writers face during composing, including strategies for audience and task analysis, invention, revision, and editing.
• Multiple models of the writing process, the varied ways individuals approach similar tasks, and the ways that writing situations and genres inform processes.
• Published texts, immediately available, that demonstrate a wide range of writing strategies and elements of craft.
• The relationships among the writing process, curriculum, learning, and pedagogy.
• How to design time for students to do their best work on an assignment.
• How writers use tools, including word-processing and design software and computer-based resources.

by the Writing Study Group of the NCTE Executive Committee, Novembe

http://www.ncte.org/positions/statements/writingbeliefs

Thoughts on Writing part 1

People learn to write by writing

As is the case with many other things people do, getting better at writing requires doing it -- a lot. This means actual writing, not merely listening to lectures about writing, doing grammar drills, or discussing readings. The more people write, the easier it gets and the more they are motivated to do it. Writers who write a lot learn more about the process because they have had more experience inside it. Writers learn from each session with their hands on a keyboard or around a pencil as they draft, rethink, revise, and draft again. Thinking about how to make your writing better is what revision is. In other words, improvement is built into the experience of writing.

What does this mean for teaching?

Writing instruction must include ample in-class and out-of-class opportunities for writing and should include writing for a variety of purposes and audiences.

Writing, though, should not be viewed as an activity that happens only within a classroom’s walls. Teachers need to support students in the development of writing lives, habits, and preferences for life outside school. We already know that many students do extensive amounts of self-sponsored writing: emailing, keeping journals or doing creative projects, instant messaging, making Web sites, blogging and so on. As much as possible, instruction should be geared toward making sense in a life outside of school, so that writing has ample room to grow in individuals’ lives. It is useful for teachers to consider what elements of their curriculum they could imagine students self-sponsoring outside of school. Ultimately, those are the activities that will produce more writing.

In order to provide quality opportunities for student writing, teachers must minimally understand:

• How to interpret curriculum documents, including things that can be taught while students are actually writing, rather than one thing at a time to all students at once.
• The elements of “writing lives” as people construct them in the world outside of school.
• Social structures that support independent work.
• How to confer with individual writers.
• How to assess while students are writing.
• How to plan what students need to know in response to ongoing research.
• How to create a sense of personal safety in the classroom, so that students are willing to write freely and at length.
• How to create community while students are writing in the same room together

by the Writing Study Group of the NCTE Executive Committee, November 2004

http://www.ncte.org/positions/statements/writingbeliefs

Writing for now, Writing forever

In Kathleen Blake Yancey's article "Writing in the 21st Century" for NCTE, the National Council for Teachers of English, she calls us to be stewards of composition. Yancey, former President of NCTE, claims that writing in the 21st century is different from writing of the past because for the first time, writing has earned a place of respect in various cultures that had previously been held only by reading. Until recently, reading has been considered the penicle of education because it can be controlled, but now, writing is being encouraged although it presents opportunity for self-expression. I picked this article to start off my blogging experience because I have chosen to express myself through writing this blog. In this blog, I hope to explore English/Language Arts Education through research and personal reflection and hopefully, emerge with a better understanding of the principles that will help my future students reach their goals. The advances we have made in writing during this first decade of the 21st century are critical to the advances we must make in education for our students to succeed. Yancey states that there are three tasks that teachers need to "take up" in order for students to excel in writing: articulate the new models of composing developing right in front of our eyes, design a new model of a writing curriculum K-graduate school, and create new models for teaching. These tasks call teachers to explore new options in outlets and curriculum for learners of all ages. Beginning with the 21st century, learners (whether they be 4th grade or middle-aged) have discovered new outlets for writing. These outlets include networking sites, graffiti, text messages, bulletin boards and blogs. By including these informal writings, our generation is acknowledging that writers are not purely academic; that writers are writing for themselves, "not to an institution" but "to each other". I am a teacher. I am a writer. By teaching students, I will be teaching writers.

Yancey, Kathleen Blake. "Writing in the 21st Century."National Council of Teachers of English. (2009): 9. Print.
http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Press/Yancey_final.pdfy_final.pdf

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