Formal Writing in a New Light

The Content Area Writing section on Public Writing gave a thorough overview of how to approach a more formal assignment with students.  It highlighted key elements that are needed in formal writing.  The more we can implement the elements while students are in middle and high school, the more prepared they will be for college and careers.  I felt that my high school education in public writing was very detailed and it helped me feel more prepared than many other students when I started writing at St. Thomas.  The exposure to public or formal writing helps students to develop a professional voice that can be used in more than just writing, like debates.  It is always important to know how to express your opinions in a professional manner with support. 

In conjunction with the public writing section, the Content Area Reading chapter on new literacies explored several different options of displaying the formal writing.  Sometimes a typical paper can be boring to students, especially when it is a formal paper.  Allowing students to explore new outlets with their writing fosters growth in creativity and individuality.  In my English class at St. Thomas, we were asked to create a wiki page with a group.  This was a fun new way to approach a formal overview of a play.  We were able to break up the writing; this made it seem more manageable.  By offering students different ways to present what they know or what they have researched will be more motivating.  Things like blogs and wikis are more relevant to the current technological age.  We all know that students always say “why do I have to know this?” or “why do I have to do this?”.  Now, when blogs and wikis and new literacies are used we can respond with this is how people get information across in the world.  Most companies use the internet to advertise themselves.  Knowledge of how to create these types of media will be a useful tool for all.

Diversity

What caught my attention most in this section of the book was the discussion about English learners.  Sometimes as secondary teachers we don’t focus a lot on the student as a whole; rather, we only notice what is happening in our subject area classroom at most times.  The section emphasized the importance of how developed the students are in other school-related aspects.  Specifically, English learners while able to communicate and understand at a basic level are most times expected to comprehend the texts used in subject area classrooms.  This is beyond a stretch for most of them; it is even a stretch for some students who have spoken, read, and understood English their whole life.  Until we as teachers begin to take the time and delve into events going on outside our subject area classroom.  I had a little experience with this in my last field experience.  One of the students was an English learner that struggled with understand the text.  Many times she was challenged to read from the textbook aloud during class.  Since she struggled with the language, she had difficulty being able to read aloud to the class.  The teacher in the classroom knew that she was an English learner and worked with her through the text.  I thought that the teacher did a good job of understanding the student’s background but still not writing the student off.  She adjusted what she expected of the student but didn’t just skip over her.  This is becoming a commonality in classrooms; more and more students are coming from more diverse backgrounds with families that do not speak English at home.  Yet, these students are still expected to perform at the same level as students who have 14 or more years experience with the language.

WTL Reflection

After watching all the Writing to Learn presentations and weighing how I presented mine, I have a few changes.  Although I picked a hard example to demonstrate the activity, I think I was still able to get across how to effectively use the WTL in a secondary classroom.  Sometimes I feel a lot of things are more easily applied in lower grades and not as well in high school classes.  But, I should have done a better job of introducing how to complete an admit slip.  I just jumped into the class writing one on their own.  A better setup would have included a few examples first.  But overall, I think I did a good job of introducing something that could be well used in most secondary classrooms.

How can we develop creative reading and writing?

            The writing to learn ideas in chapter 2 of Content-Area Writing got me to think more about all the things as students we have graded and how it affects our mind set of writing and reading.  So many students spend hours upon hours agonizing over the paper they are writing.  They scrutinize it for grammatical and content perfection and then hand it over to 1 or 2 more people to analyze. So when most students get a few hours to relax they pick the T.V., internet, social media sites, malls, etc. to unwind.  The pressure of school related, graded writing and reading tasks has caused many young adults to be turned off by these tasks to consider them leisure activities.  When students do pick up a book to read they most often choose fantasy books that take them away from their real lives like: Harry Potter, Twilight, and  Lord of the Rings, to name a few.  Writing is something that most young adults do constantly throughout the day.  They are on their phones texting from the moment they wake up until they go to bed at night.  They are on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter chatting, commenting, and posting constantly.  Most young adults are using slang with no grammar on these sites.  As teachers, we are concerned that their continued use of these sites with poor to no grammar is causing destructive grammar habits.  This may be true for a minority of students, but for others it is a great opportunity for them to develop their personal style of writing.  Things like grammar and proper words are left out because many see them as time consuming and unimportant when chatting with friends.  Most of the young adult population understands that the informal language they use on these sites in not appropriate for a business or school setting.  Unlike the social media sites, in the school setting students have so many constraints on what they have to write, how they have to write it, and what they need to read that the creativity never makes it onto the page.  In order to develop the young minds in our classrooms, we need to give the students more freedom in writing.  We don’t always need to pull out a red pen and mark-up everything they write or dictate every book they need to read.  Giving them the option to take things in their own direction, granted with a little guidance, will allow students to grow and develop their own creativity and love for reading and writing.

Why such high-stake assessments?

The comparison of the two different assessment types, high-stakes formal and authentic informal, reveals the problems the American Education system has with evaluating the knowledge obtained by students.  The standards that have been and continue to be implemented in our schools are causing stress not only among the students but are pressuring the teachers as well.  The norm of high-stakes formal exams causes students to become anxiety ridden for days if not weeks before the actually exam.  Many spend countless hours studying and quizzing themselves on what they think will be on the exam.  Others give up before they even give it a chance because they are positive no matter how hard they try it will turn out poorly.  So many classes that students take are now graded based on little other than exams or papers.  Teachers are forced to put the pressure on the students to meet the standards that require high-stakes assessments.   While some students can handle the pressure and perform well on these assessments, others who understand the material but suffer from anxiety continually are low performers.  The high-stakes approach does not give a good overview of the student’s knowledge.  The classes our students are taking today need to be a hybrid of informal and formal assessments to properly assess their knowledge.  Of course this may not be the best answer, but it is a step in the right direction.

In addition to reviewing how we assess students, it is important to remember the materials we are providing to them.  If we are as school districts and teachers are not providing the students with the best resources possible, it is not reasonable for us to expect students to perform at the levels we have set.  When it comes to the textbooks and other resources we direct the students to we need to scrutinize the content and readability of that source.  In this case, high-stakes assessments would fit.  We need to put every ounce of pressure on these sources so we know they hold up and can assist our students.

Of course, textbooks and other resources are not the only way the material should be delivered to students.  Teachers need to assess each and every lesson they have to maximize the comprehension of the material they are conveying to the students.  We need to take the pressure off of the teachers though and apply it to the lessons they are preparing.  It does not help in any case to pressure a person; most people crack that is just our nature.  On the other hand, textbooks, resources, and lessons can always handle the pressure and can be improved little by little each time.

Literacy Matters...

                After reading through the Literacy Matters and Writing in the Content Areas chapters, it became more obvious to me how important it is to instruct students how to read textbooks for each specific subject.  As a math major I have become accustomed to reading very dense material that is laced with examples and theories.  Most math textbooks are written with chapters and sections within the chapters; a more bulleted type text.  So when I switch to classes that have a paragraphical formatted textbook, it becomes more difficult and time consuming.  Based on this, I have troubles focusing long enough to get through the text.  When I do finish the text I usually have to go back through to pick out the important topics and reread them to get a basis of chapter.  After realizing how difficult it is to switch between textbooks of different topics, it became clear that as a future teacher it is imperative that I spend the time to explain how to go through my content area textbook and get the most out of it.  If I don’t take the time, students who are not accustomed to the specific style of text will become very frustrated even if they are excellent students.  The challenge we have as future teachers is encouraging students to put the extra effort in to understand different styles of text.  Many of my friends and students I’ve worked with or coached don’t have the extra time to learn a new style, especially if it is in a subject that they dislike.

            More specifically to my content area, math, I have recently seen a commercial that really puts into perspective many people’s thoughts on the subject.  If you haven’t seen the commercial for Sylvan I will recap it: a young boy is doing homework at a table and calls to his mom for help on his math homework.  You see his mom look over his shoulder and get scared and run away.  The narrator is commenting on how hard math was when you took it and that it has only gotten more difficult since then.  This commercial and other media is playing a large role in how students perceive the work they are asked to complete.  This commercial screams to parents and students that math is difficult and most people do not understand it either.  In my mind, this creates an even bigger challenge for math teachers.  They are fighting the common image of math in the media, trying to convey the ideas and content, and also are beginning to realize the importance of teaching how to read and comprehend the style of textbook.  This is also true for others subjects, but it hit home after repeatedly seeing the Sylvan commercial.  So what is the best way for teachers to incorporate all of the support students need and still be able to cover content successfully?