Writing across the curriculum

Writing across the curriculum

David R Cole

writing

• All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery. Writing a book is a long, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.George Orwell (1947)

Introduction• Maintain the child in a

rich literacy environment• Encourage a have-a-go

attitude – outside of the comfort zone

• Do not over correct first draft and expressive attempts at writing (allow for contingency)

• Scaffold lines of development : i.e. meaning, syntax, spelling, handwriting and context

• Make explicit connections between oral and written language – give ownership to the writer…

The writing circle (genre theory)

From (Tas, 2004) Book chapter on genre theory

Transactional model of writing development (Arnold, 1991)

• Writing development is not a linear process

• It coincides with the development of ‘the self’ and the ability to relate aspects of yourself to others

• Students may develop quickly and regress equally as quickly depending upon psychological & environmental factors

• At all stages of writing development, support the student’s work through guided, modelled and shared examples.

Essay on transactional model of w.d.

Experimental writing• Reads back own writing• Attempts familiar forms of

writing – lists, letters, recounts, stories

• Writes using simplified oral language structures

• Uses writing to convey meaning

• Realises that print contains a constant message

• Uses left to right and top to bottom orientation

• Demonstrates one-to one correspondence bet ween written and spoken word

• Relies heavily on the most obvious sounds of a word

Early writing• Uses a range of familiar text

forms• Chooses topics that are

personally significant• Uses basic sentence structure

and varies sentence beginnings

• Can explain in context some of the purposes of using writing – e.g. the use of a shopping list

• Experiments with words drawn from different mediums in writing

• Begins to develop editing skills• Attempts to use punctuation• Talks to others when planning

and revising work

Conventional writing• Uses text forms to suit purpose

and audience• Can explain why some text forms

may be more appropriate than others to achieve a purpose

• Writes a range of text forms including stories, reports, procedures and expositions

• Uses a variety of simple, compound and extended sentences

• Groups sentences into paragraphs• Selects vocabulary according to

purpose and audience• Uses proof-reading and checklist

techniques to edit• Punctuates correctly• Uses a range of strategies for

planning, revising and publishing written text

Proficient writing

• Selects text forms to suit purpose and audience, demonstrating control over genre types

• Can state the goals of writing a text and can explain how well they have been achieved

• Writes to define, clarify and develop ideas and expressive writing – poems, reports, arguments

• Writes a topic sentence and can develop cohesive paragraphs• Organises paragraphs logically• Uses a variety of sentence structures appropriate to text form• Uses a large repertoire of words, expresses meaning clearly• Edits own writing• Accurate use of punctuation• Takes notes, selects and synthesises relevant information and plans sequence

Article on w.d.

Questions to ask ?• In what ways do I plan a clear framework within which students can

express and order their ideas for writing? • Do I focus on one or two aspects of writing at a time so that students

can practise new skills? • Do I provide opportunities for students to discuss their

understandings of the writing process in problem solving sessions? • Do I provide time for the students to reflect on what they know and to

think about what they need to know so that they have ownership and control of their own writing development?

• Do I plan in advance so that I can collect a range of resources including books, magazines, tapes, videos, CD ROMS and maps?

• Am I aware of the teaching points about writing that may be derived from different texts?

• Have I planned opportunities for regular demonstrations in modelled and shared writing sessions?

• What opportunities am I providing for students to pursue their own personal writing as well as teacher directed activities?

• Have I allowed students to negotiate some aspects of the writing program?

Purpose & writing forms• To record feelings, observations etc • Personal letters • Reports • Notes & jottings • Poems • Diaries • Recounts • To describe • Character portraits • Labels & captions • Descriptions • Advertisements • To inform or advise • Posters • Scripts for news broadcasts • Invitations • Programs • Minutes of meetings • To persuade • Advertisements • Letters to the editor • Cartoons • Notes for a debate • Discursive essays

Purpose & writing forms II• To explore & maintain relationships with others • Letters & Making requests • Greeting cards & Questionnaires • To predict or hypothesise • Speculations about possible outcomes in other learning area topics • Endings for stories • Questions for research or interviews • To make comparisons• Charts & Note-making • Essays, Diagrams &Graphs • Descriptions • To command or direct • Recipes & Instructions How to make … • stage directions • Rules for games, safety, health • To entertain or amuse • Jokes, riddles • Scripts for drama, puppet shows • Stories & Poems • Personal anecdotes • To clarify thinking • Note-taking for research • Explanations of graphs, diagrams • Jottings & Journal writing

More than purpose• Good writing is Affective (from affect)• Purpose is useful in that students are writing

for a reason, parallel to critical literacy which enables writing for social change...

• However purpose and critical literacy are useless unless the pupils want to write

• The teacher of writing should work on the conditions whereby desire becomes apparent in the writing of the pupils.

• This can be achieved through the linkage of the writing with phenomena (realia) – objects, scenarios and subjects, that are impinging on the lives of the group.

What is the next line?

• I wandered lonely as a cloud• That floats on high o'er vales and hills (Wordsworth)• I was angry with my friend• I told my wrath, my wrath did end (Blake)• He lives the poetry that he cannot write• The others write the poetry that they dare not realise

(Wilde)• All the world’s a stage• And all the men and women merely players

(Shakespeare)• He who writes in blood and aphorisms does not want to

be read• He wants to be learned by heart (Nietzsche)

Amsler (2004)

• Definition: The term affective literacy locates a broad range of somatic, emotive responses to reading a text. Affective literacy seeks out the life principle, messy and complex, threading through reading activities and gestures toward bodily economies of reading and transacting texts.

Affective literacy paper

Affective literacy (Cole, 2007) • Affective engagement of the teacher. This is not a prescriptive

approach to teaching writing - the teacher must therefore find his or her own passionate reasons for teaching the text in question.

• Affective engagement of the students (Seaton, 2002). The text that teachers choose should tap into the social/cultural values of the community to be ‘affective’.

• Advocating the pleasure in reading (Misson & Morgan, 2005). This is where a relationship with the text is created by the reader and maintained through education.

• Extracting affective themes from the text. These will provide the focus for study and inquiry and constitute organising principles for lesson plans and units of work.

• Designing pedagogies that effectively handle the affective themes of the text. The teachers using this approach need to maintain the impact and power of the texts by becoming confident in using textual and social affects (Fiumara, 2001; Forgas, 2001) to enhance classroom experience.

The Monster (M. Shelley)

Wide Sargasso Sea

• Our garden was large and beautiful as that garden in the Bible – the tree of life grew there. But it had gone wild. The paths were overgrown and a smell of dead flowers mixed with the fresh living smell. Underneath the tree ferns, tall as forest trees, the light was green. Orchids flourished out of reach or for some reason not to be touched. One was snaky looking, another like an octopus with long thin brown tentacles bare of leaves hanging from a twisted root.

• Rhys, 2000, p. 6

Writing & discourse

• In becoming literate, we are drawn to consider the relationship between the individual, language and experience. Drawing on the work of Foucault, Misson (2001) suggests that in writing we are creating ourselves. "We write ourselves into being" (p. 6). We are creating a world. Moreover, we write with "pre-existent purposes, we write to express things" and in doing so "we are constantly surprising ourselves" (p. 8).

Becoming literate paper

Writing & literature

• The fascination with literature at the heart of the English curriculum is also a fascination with the diversity and commonality of human individuality — an individuality that is based in different ways in which we all intersect with time and space and in how the immediate social and cultural influences that surround us shape and inform our experiences so that we are different, but also to share the differences with and through common cultural resources, Neelands (2001).

Writing & literature paper

The struggling writer• Will need to have more scaffolded

interventions – e.g. grammar instruction, extra vocabulary, spelling help, writing coherence and direction

• Should work more regularly in joint construction of text

• Must be set simple writing tasks, not homework

• Cannot be expected to work on differentiated tasks, e.g. hybrid genres or a follow on type strategy when one writing piece leads to another

• Should not spend too long writing on their own, so need more oral input

The gifted writer• Do not repeat the same exercise• Use your imagination when setting tasks• Use hybrid and follow on strategies, e.g. write

a report that uses poetic language or separate journal entries that document an adventure in the desert

• Challenge the writer by setting high standards of editing and publication

• Make the gifted writer the class newspaper editor

• Allow them to work on their own • Point out new and exciting texts from which

they may draw inspiration...

Books that bite• Book choice is vital to engage

the students in the writing process

• Reading material should enable children to make specific and well fashioned references to styles of writing and the choices that writers make in their literature (e.g. the use of a protagonist or narrative voice)

• Show children the diverse and varied nature of reading and writing possibilities to engage their imagination in language activities

“There are no great writers, only great re-writers”.

Cthulhuic Literacy?

• Sometimes the tone and mood are the most important elements of a story...

• Concepts add shape & form to text (the unknown)

• The real contains unexpected surprises• Everyday life is not boring.• The unconscious has a dark side...• You never know how your work will be viewed

by posterity

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown (Lovecraft, 1926)

?

• Samuel Beckett (1932) : I shall state silences more competently than ever a better man spangled the butterflies of vertigo...

Are you a writer?

A Mushroom of Glass

Endnote• Jean-Paul Sartre

(1964):“Sentences emerged that

frightened me: they were like real centipedes; they swarmed with syllables and letters, span out their diphthongs and made double consonants hum” (p. 118).

• Good writing makes language come to life

• Encourage the children to experiment and feel words as living objects…

referencesAmsler, M. (2004). Affective literacy: Gestures of reading in the Later Middle Ages. University of

Wisconsin-Milwaukee, retrieved October 11, 2005, from http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ essays_in_medieval_studies/v018/18.1amsler.html

Arnold, R. (1991). Writing Development: Magic in the Brain. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

Beckett, S. (1932). Belacqua, in Dream of Fair to Middling Women. Available online at:http://www.poemhunter.com/quotations/famous.asp?people=Samuel%20Beckett

Cole, D.R. (2007). Teaching Frankenstein and Wide Sargasso Sea Using Affective Literacy. English in Australia, Volume 42, Number 2, pp. 69-77.

Education Department of Western Australia. (1997). Writing Continuum. Port Melbourne: Rigby Heinmann.

Fiumara, G. C. (2001). The mind’s affective life; a psychoanalytic and philosophical inquiry. Hove: Brunner-Routledge.

Forgas, J. P. (Ed.), (2001). The handbook of affect and social cognition. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Lovecraft, H.P. (1926). The Call of Cthulhu. Available at: http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/thecallofcthulhu.htm

Misson, R. (2001). What are we creating in Creative Writing? Paper presented at the National Joint Conference of the Australian Association for Literacy Education and the Australian English Teachers Association, Hobart, Tasmania.

Misson, R., & Morgan, W. (2005). Beyond the Pleasure principle? Confessions of a Critical Literacy Teacher. English in Australia, Issue 144: Summer 2005, pp. 17-25.

Neelands, J. (2001). Remember, we are human. Keynote address, National Joint Conference of the Australian Association for Literacy Education and the Australian Association for Teachers of English, Hobart, Tasmania.

Orwell, G. (1947). Why I write. Available online at: http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/whywrite.htm

Rhys, J. (2000). Wide Sargasso Sea. London: Penguin Classics.

Sartre, J. P. (1964). The words. New York: Fawcett.

Seaton, A. (2002). Four Curricular Forms: Supporting Literacy in Middle-School Programming. In B. Gordon (Ed.), Practical Literacy Programming (pp. 93-107). Newtown: Primary English Teaching Association.

Tas (2004). Tasmania English web site. Available at: http://www.tas.gov.au/English