Teaching Adolescent Writers: Chapter 3; Content Area Writing: The Rest of Chapter 3

Teaching Adolescent Writers
(Page 49) “Unfortunately, many students continue year in and year out with the same mistaken notion that writing is easy for some and difficult for others.”
This is the same concept that students have about reading—they just think people are naturally good readers and don’t realize that good readers got that way because they read a lot. Just like our struggling readers need us to think aloud so they’ll know what should be going through their minds while they read, our students need to see us start writing from scratch, so they can see how it is developed from beginning to end.

Students seem to think the books they read are just churned out that way. They don’t realize how writers rewrite and edit their work tons of times before it goes to the publisher. With the leak of Midnight Sun on the Internet, author Stephenie Meyer urges fans not to read it not only because she wasn’t ready for it to be released, but also because “the writing is messy and flawed and full of mistakes.” The woman who has sold MILLIONS of copies of her book admits to her writing not being very good. (You knew I’d have to get a Twilight connection in there somehow!) So…we need to model, model, model for students, so that they’ll realize that a final product isn’t easy for anyone—it takes much time and effort!

Content Area Writing

The last three writing-to-learn strategies in this chapter seem to be geared for the visual learners. Every time I see stuff about using drawings for understanding, I always think about Jimmy Richardson sharing his students’ “sketch to stretch” drawings when they were studying different religions. I think only Christy and Claire were in his group two years ago when he shared it. My favorite was the student who drew Jesus rising up out of the tomb and someone else looking in it saying, “Yo, dog. He ain’t in there” for his depiction of Christianity. Funny stuff! Has anyone tried any of the strategies from Chapter 3? If so, share how it went!

Content Area Writing: Chapter 2 and 3 through Page 47

(Page 27) “It is entirely possible for a student to glance through a textbook and copy down these answers without ever reading the chapter, doing any thinking, or ultimately, having a glimmer of recollection—of anything.”
But it’s so eeeeasy to have them answer the questions and give them a grade for it! How many times in your school career did you have to answer the questions in the textbook? The answers could always be found in the order of the questions, and it was pretty simple to skim through until you found matching words. Well, simple for pretty good readers. When I first started teaching, I was amazed at how many of my resource students struggled with this. Part of the problem was their difficulty with reading and part of it was their difficulty with understanding how textbooks work. And so those students would end up with not so great grades. The teachers would then see a clear range of grades on the task and think there must be some merit to it because not everyone made a 100.

Think about how much more effective it is for teachers to use writing to learn activities instead. I like how the authors provide us with lots of examples of how we use such things in our everyday lives. I can’t tell you how many times I swear to myself that I’m going to remember something so I don’t need to write it down only to end up forgetting it completely. The reason I always think I’ll be okay is because the times that I do write something down, I end up not needing to look at it because I remember it. Well, duh! The reason I remember is because I wrote it down. How much more do you think your students would remember things if you just paused and had them write down what you had just discussed in class? Did anyone have the chance to try out any of the WTL strategies discussed in the book? If so, how did it go?