I found the section in Chapter eight about applying three types of knowledge to be very interesting. It explained that “Writing to learn requires that students use different kinds of knowledge at different times.” The three types of knowledge are declarative, procedural, and conditional. These types were defined in the book and I found them very interesting because it was something I have never heard before. I also really enjoyed reading about the different writing strategies that can be used in the classroom. These gave me great new ideas that I can document and use in my future teaching lessons. It is so important that students learn to write not only in English class, but all other subjects as well. I thought all of the ideas about writing in math and science were really good and they could really help student’s understandings of the subject matter. I think every teacher should get a copy of this article and read this chapter, then the students would have a better benefit with writing.
When I was in school, writing seemed like a boring chore than anything else. My experiences were the same as everyone else, I had to copy my spelling and vocabulary words multiple times each. That was never fun and really took my creativity from me when it came to writing. It wasn’t until seventh grade that I became interested in writing. My English teacher had us keep a spiral notebook that was our journal. At the beginning of every class she either had a topic prompt about something we have been learning about in not only her class but our other classes as well. We would have to explain things or answer questions, but it encouraged us to think and improve our writing skills. If we would have done this in every class we could have benefited so much more!
1. How would I implement all of these strategies to my students without over doing all the writing?
2. Where could I find even more strategies that would work in multiple subject areas?
From Maggie B via Dr B:
ReplyDeleteClaire, I was in the same situation as you. I never wrote to learn until my 9th grade History teacher. This particular teacher would put a topic on the board and we would have to write at least a page in our journal with our feelings and thoughts about the topic. I really liked doing this because I got to write about something different every day and a lot of the time, the topic was something that was either going on in today's world or a word that most of us did not know. This helped us learn a great deal more than what we came into the classroom knowing. I think that is important to have students writing at some point of the school day. Students absolutely need to learn how to write, but also write to learn!
Hi Claire, first of all, what type of fish is that you're holding in your profile pic? Nice catch. About you first question, I'm just going to go out on a limb here and say that I've never heard of a teacher "over doing" writing. That said, I think I understand where you're coming from with that question and I'd say go with what feels natural; students are pretty good gauges for you, if they start grumbling about the writing, you may want to take a step back and look at how and why you're using writing. You even make a great personal interjection in your second para, "When I was in school, writing seemed like a boring chore than anything else. My experiences were the same as everyone else, I had to copy my spelling and vocabulary words multiple times each. That was never fun and really took my creativity from me when it came to writing. It wasn’t until seventh grade that I became interested in writing. My English teacher had us keep a spiral notebook that was our journal. At the beginning of every class she either had a topic prompt about something we have been learning about in not only her class but our other classes as well. We would have to explain things or answer questions, but it encouraged us to think and improve our writing skills." That's an experience to take with you into your own teaching. Dr. B
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