Teaching Writing That Matters: PowerPoint and Handout

Powerpoint Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GnFSTm7L_oHNipzPlX8MHFZ-FtigzbQC/view?usp=sharing

Teaching Writing That Matters

Foreword

            Among the consequences that have come about from the nation’s slide towards standardized testing as a means of gauging student growth has been the lowering quality of writing instruction. Students are encouraged to write for test taking situations which not only leave them unprepared for any writing outside of that particular environment, it leaves their growth as writers stunted entirely. The book posits three aspects of writing that current trends have seen atrophy: Reflection, Rhetorical Awareness, and Community.

Reflection

            Not only a method of communication, writing can be a form of reflection. Indeed, reflection is crucial for learning effective writing. The best writing, whether fictional or otherwise, carries something crucial of the writer in it. This is especially true for teachers, as they not only must reflect on their writing but their teaching. It is important to teach students reflective writing as well as not only does it help them care about their writing, it also helps them develop their skills.

Possible activities: Examining the grammar of famous writers and examining when and why they break the rules of grammar. Write liner notes for five songs that are meaningful to you.

Rhetorical Awareness

There is no such thing as writing in a vacuum. All writers are speaking to some kind of audience. While standardized testing portrays the audience as a gray wall that hands out a test score, there is always a person on the other side. The current focus test-taking, makes it difficult for students to write for different audiences and contexts. The science student who excelled in high school struggles in a college literature class because he was never taught anything but fact-based scientific writing. The girl who cannot grasp opportunities because she was never taught to write a resume. These are students who never got a chance to learn about rhetorical awareness. Teacher’s must also learn rhetorical awareness if they wish to teach effective writing. They must keep the students, their beliefs, and their circumstances in mind if they wish to teach them lest they hand them assignments that the student will not only misunderstand but feel insulted by.

Possible Activities: A writing assignment where you present the same information in three different mediums, giving feedback not as a teacher but as an employer, debate opponent, or fiction editor.

Community

        Despite what stereotypes tell you, writing is not an individual effort. The writer is locked into a conversation with not only other readers, but other writers. The current environment stifles this essential part of the writing process. Collaboration between writers is regarded as cheating in the midst of standardized testing. But community is not only important for quality of writing, it is important to maintain for the sake of student engagement. Community can be valuable to a kid and they will work hard for the sake of it. Teachers can make the classroom a social space in an of itself, where students share one of the most intensely personal things they can, their writing. A healthy community may be hard to maintain however. But other teachers can help each other in their own community to make a good classroom space a reality.

Possible activities: Bringing in another teacher to examine the classroom in action, having students write about how they would make schools better more welcoming places.

Conclusion

        By helping reintroduce community, rhetorical awareness, and reflection to the classroom, teachers can create a kind of renaissance in their schools. There are challenges: the tools this book gives us might not always work. Worse, many of them might not be compatible with common core. But if a teacher is smart enough, dedicated enough, and creative enough they can teach students to not merely be effective writers, but to love writing.