Writing in the Classroom

Writing in the Classroom

By Andrew Rivas

Teachers improve their knowledge of writing and the teaching of writing by writing themselves and by reflecting on their writing process in a learning community (Foundational Principle of the National Writing Project and the Hudson Valley Writing Project at SUNY New Paltz).

(CC) Andrew Rivas

Writing in the Classroom: A Rationale

By Andrew Rivas

―It is the process of discovery through language. It is the process of exploration of what we know and what we feel about what we know through language. It is the process of using language to learn about the world, to evaluate what we learn about our world, to communicate what we learn about our world.‖ (Murray, 4)

Reading and Writing in the classroom is more than just learning grammar,

syntax, and spelling. It is more than reading stories and reciting the plot

structure and details. It serves to help us learn about the world, how to

interact with it and evaluate it, and overall how to become more educated and

productive members of society.

Teachers should aim to teach students how to “write to learn”—i.e.,

writing in ways to demonstrate writing as “a tool for documentation,

inquiry, reflection, and analysis of rich content” (Devoss 42). Devoss

argues that important strategies that support students as writers fall into

three types of work within the classroom:

•―Supporting students in the process of writing, including teaching them strategies for planning, revising, and editing their writing…to give, receive, and use feedback, and to reflect on their growth over time. •―Studying the craft of writing, including analyzing how texts in different media are designed and how they function… •―Helping students analyze and understand the rhetorical situation for their writing, including how to think about audience, clarify purpose, and work with form and stance in order to cultivate in students the flexibility and strategic thinking that help them address new occasions for writing‖ (Devoss 42)

These strategies serve a few purposes:

1) Students are able to succinctly and

accurately give and receive feedback and use that

feedback to better their work (which is useful for

many reasons, even outside the classroom; it is

particularly useful in the working environment);

2) Students will become more literate and be

cognizant of their literacy and what that means

for them outside of the teaching environment;

3) Students will become more aware of the

impacts of genre, audience, and purposes of

texts which will impact the ways they interact

with all forms of media (not just literature).

―Here is a great irony. We have a curriculum in which students write exposition; but when they read, they read literature. We should have them do both types of reading and writing‖ (Moffet).

In order to convey reading and writing skills that will be useful to students

outside of the classroom, we need to have them read and write in various

forms of media; we need to differentiate their instruction. By reading one

genre and writing another, we implicitly separate reading and writing, when

they should be opposite sides of the same coin.

Moffet argues that “all writing is thinking; it is simply a question of

whether the thinking is explicit or implicit”; by teaching kids how to

write effectively, we are teaching them how to think effectively, and how

to articulate those thoughts directly.

In order to teach effectively, we as educators

need to readdress the ways in which we evaluate

our students. Elbow argues that there are three

problems with ranking students’ work:

1) ―The unreliability. To rank reliably means to give a fair number, to find the single quantitative score that readers will agree on.‖ (Elbow 188)

Educators should focus more on tangible

feedback than on intangible grading: show

what students are doing correctly, while un-

aggressively showing them what they need

to work on; subjective grades become more

objective (not entirely objective, but still)

the more feedback is given to the student.

2) ―Ranking or grading is woefully uncommunicative. Grades and holistic scores are nothing but points on a continuum from ―yea‖ to ―boo‖—with no information or clues about the criteria behind these noises.‖ (Elbow 189)

Again, feedback is essential to the grading process. It should be more similar

to a conversation than a lecture; providing ample feedback to students and

listening to their concerns and fears over the writing process is critical to consider

in the classroom.

3) Ranking leads students to get so hung up on these oversimple quantitative verdicts that they care more about scores than about learning—more about the grade we put on the paper than about the comment we have written on it. (Elbow 190)

The learning process is what’s most important here; not the

grade on the essay that’s thrown out when the student sees it.

Teaching students to concentrate more on their learning than

on grades can be a difficult process; but it is one we can

achieve by conveying to students what they are doing well

rather than what they are doing poorly.

A major difficulty many educators have is meeting state standards while still

providing creative and visionary ways of teaching students in the classroom. Burke

states that

―…meeting the standards while meeting students’ needs is a balancing act… [standards], while providing direction, shouldn’t provide boundaries. Indeed, we must constantly push the boundaries of students understanding in all areas…‖ (Burke 60) This balancing act is often the most difficult aspect of a teacher’s

career. How can we blend reading and writing instruction with the

need to prepare students for state tests? How can we create creatively

engaging lessons that still apply the knowledge that students need to

know? How can I be a good teacher in the eyes of the students and

in the eyes of the administration? It is sadly not a question that has

one answer; but by employing the methods from the readings we’ve

done this semester is a good start. They can teach us how to improve

students learning instead of hamper it; they can teach us how to

scaffold instruction, give helpful feedback to students, treat them as

learners instead of as grade point averages; they can teach us to be

better teachers by shaping the ways in which we teach.

Bibliography

Burke, Jim. (2001). Developing students’ textual intelligence through grammar. Voices From the Middle, 8, 3, 56-61. DeVoss, D., Eidman-Aadahl, E., and Hicks, T. (2010). ―Revising the writing process‖ in Because Digital Writing Matters. CA: Jossey-Bass. Elbow, Peter. (1993). Ranking, evaluating, and liking: Sorting out three forms of judgment. College English, 55.2, 187-206. Maltese, Denise. (2006, December). Out of the narrow tunnel and into the universe of discourse. Voices from the Middle, 14, 2, 47–560. Murray, Donald. (1972). Teach writing as process not product. The Leaflet, 11-14. Reprinted in V. Villanueva (Ed.), Cross-Talk in comp theory, 3-6. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1997.