The Teaching of Writing

I have actually enjoyed reading my articles. I am beginning to feel that I am learning stuff that I will apply to my classroom (hopefully). The main thing I have gathered from reading the first three articles in set one is that when teaching writing to your students it is best to have them be engaged in writing something that is personal and meaningful to them. In the article "Seeing Writing Instruction Differently: Lessons with Lasting Impressions" by Jill Dillard the reader came to understand that having your students engage in writing stories that are personal to them such as past events in their life that the students in turn created better text. Jill, an elementary school teacher, had her students try writing on three separate occasions using three separate prompts. One prompt was showing a picture to the students and have them write a story about it, a second prompt was having her students write about a medieval event that was about to happen at school, her third prompt was to write about a life experience. Throughout her experimentation of this she found that when the students wrote about their life experiences they generated more text and better writing styles. When the students wrote about stuff they were not connected to they produced less text and focused their writing towards what they thought she/Jill would want them to write on. This method also proved true for Brett Elizabeth Blake in his article "Fruit of the Devil: Writing and English Language Learners" where he taught writing to EL's (English learners)in a summer program. He found that when he showed compassion to his students and really got to know them as individuals that they were more willing to open up in their writings. He also had them write about their life experiences which he found also helped them open up in their writings. In conclusion, these readings have been helpful to me and I enjoy thinking about what I am learning when reflecting on them.