Suzanne Laverick Harrington’s article “Our own stories- One teacher’s writing journey: Hey I’ve been there,” from The Reading Teacher (1998) explains that writer’s block, can be fixed if teachers were able to boost the confidence of their students. Harrington first backs her assertion with ways to prevent writer’s block with an antidote that works for her; second, with an explanation of her own struggles as an obsessed writer; and lastly, through her experience working with students who are “paralyzed with fear” in a classroom. Her purpose of writing this article is to inform rookie writers to not fear this so called disease as a way of giving up on the one thing they love. Even though Harrington writes this article to writers, her way of writing and her eye catching title attracts young college students who are struggling with their writings who crave help for their ideas to flow into their own work.…
Getting the attention of kindergarteners can be hard sometimes, one way to grab their short attention is by telling them a secret. VanNess starts one of her first writing lessons by telling her students a secret and that secret is that “kindergarteners can write!” (574) When she tells her students they can write, she sees faces light up all around her. VanNess starts out the lessons with something simple and gives some examples of ways to use the word I. She models with the students and once they start to get comfortable with the word she releases them to do it on their own.…
, What literary elements were being covered?, and What types of writing assignments were being done? needed to be answered. Other than a sporadic professional development day, there was no time built into our schedules to discuss, analyze, and plan for curriculum goals. If there was one goal we as ELA teachers could agree upon it was: helping our students become better writers.…
Throughout the development of Literacy, there are all types of writing, from as small as a nursery rhyme book for newborn babies, to encyclopedias of the many wonders of the universe itself. Also in literacy, Writers can write almost anything to everything with the help of others that has the same motive or similar goals in mind when it comes to writing, which comes to the understanding of Sponsors of Literacy and Discourse Communities. Sponsors of Literacy is anyone that is considered with the ability to teach, enable, support, teach, model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy, while gaining a boost or advantage from it in some type of form or fashion. While Discourse Communities deals with a group of people that…
Contrary to Tompkins (2012) theory that explains children can be writers at the same time they are learning to read if not sooner; when children are able to develop the interrelation of purpose, audience they can write about those experiences while learning standard spelling usage, capitalization, and punctuation. The writing process has five features with subsections lead the writer through the complete process of producing a paper ready for publishing. When I compare my writing preparation I find that most times it falls into prewriting = 1st draft, revising = 2nd draft, final round of revising for grammar/punctuation errors, and the paper is ready for submission. Tompkins (2012) outlines the constructive process of writing with the key features; prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing.…
According to Boyles (2004), “teachers talk with students to monitor their progress as well as to set goals and help them solve problems” (p.75). Teachers should conduct writing conferences in order to assess and evaluate the writing progress of their students. The purpose of writing conferences is finding the strengths and weaknesses of their writing to improve and develop the skills the student already has. Depending on the students writing the teacher facilitates interventions to improve the students writing skills. Teachers should frequently plan writing conferences to check-in on their students and the progress they have made.…
I teach "Introduction to Literature" and "Standard Freshman Composition" courses at Suffolk County Community College. I personally design both of my courses, which adhere to the mission statement of the college. In "Introduction to Literature," my students engage in imaginative works of literature, analyze major literary themes and forms, continue training in effective prose writing skills, and demonstrate maturity and thought and style when deconstructing literary elements such as image, plot, character, theme, and conflict. In "Standard Freshman Composition," I prepare my students to produce quality work that utilizes writing techniques, analyzes reading material, and incorporates research techniques that will aide them in their academic future. The outcomes of this course are for the student to be able to construct a central purpose in their expository work, to have coherent organization, improved writing mechanics, to formulate effective thesis statements that demonstrate complex thought, and to integrate relevant, cited sources into their work.…
Some people have been lucky enough to experience the privilege of being educated. Whether or not one has been educated, he or she knows education is an important life aspect because it allows people to learn valuable life lessons and skills. Everyone has their own views on which teaching style is the best, including Mr. Steve Wyrick. In an argumentative essay entitled, “Red-Pen Rhetoric: Looking at the Response to Student Writing in Freshman College Composition Courses,” graduate student and teacher assistant, Mr. Steven T. Wyrick, focuses on what he believes to be the best relationship between student and teacher.…
Really, the only kind of writing I do outside of school is text my friends. It’s been a pretty long time since i’ve written a story or something outside of school. The reason for that is because I don’t like to write without a specific subject. To be honest, I’m ok with writing, as long as it has some sort of a subject. I absolutely despise having to write some random story that doesn’t have any control, it’s just not fun.…
To be completely honest I have mixed feelings about writing and I don’t really have any memorable experiences that made me feel this way, it is just the experiences that I have had with the subject while trying to apply it. I struggle with what to write down mostly and creativity in general and I don’t really excel at any part of it. If I were to say I “excel” at anything it would be revising my work and adding to it. At the end of the semester I hope that I have relearned some key writing elements that lack of practice has caused me to lose.…
What is more important is that students practice writing. Teachers also need to devote time to feedback through individual sessions or “conferences”. There are typically two types of conferences: a content conference in which the teacher asks the student about his or her story and a skill conference where the teacher emphasizes basic writing skills such as spelling, punctuation and…
August 2010: It is the start of a new schoolyear, and I’m entering my second and final year of middle school. I’m around thirteen years old and very excited for one class and one class only, English. Although I’ve always excelled in math, English has always been my passion. One day, I hoped to add English to my list of strengths.…
I have always considered my relationship with writing to be very insignificant. Although I enjoy spending time verbally expressing my thoughts and feelings to others, it becomes difficult when these thoughts and feelings are expressed through writing. Throughout my adolescent years, I would often receive feedback for my writing given by the teacher in the form of a grade. Being unable to effectively organize my thoughts and ideas into words and sentences, I would feel reluctant to continue writing confidently whenever I received an undesirable grade.…
“Too often, the aspect of creativity and personal expression are hidden from students, who are only driven toward academic or professional tasks in writing” (Nielsen 148). Teachers that don’t bring out the independence and creativeness of their students are missing out on the great ideas their mind creates. Hence, good teachers prepare their students for the real world giving them lifelong skills that…
According to (Nisen1) Humanities is becoming a long battle in the education industry. Teenagers and even adults are struggling to think and write clearly. I agree with Nisen that secondary and Primary education is a problem because k-12 humanities teachers are not as well trained as STEM ones, Federal funding for international education is down 41%, and many college students graduate without being able to write clearly. Secondary and Primary teachers are not as well trained as those of STEM (Nisen 1). In elementary school, students are taught to write in cursive.…