Ms. Cooper's Classroom

Extending the Dimensions of Literacy

 

There is a rift between the type of writing we experience on a daily basis and the type of writing we teach students in school. Although we, as teachers, desire to prepare students for the “real world,” focusing on exposition type writing is doing quite the opposite: we are disconnecting students from real world writing. Tchudi and Tchudi suggest expanding the genres and purposes of writing to include informative, persuasive, personal, and imaginative writing, as well as drama and oral English, popular forms, and media composition. While I would expose my students to all of these types of writing, I would guide my students mainly toward personal, imaginative, and informative writing, as these types, in my opinion, tend to be most useful for students’ real world experience. Therefore, writing within drama, popular forms, and media composition would be limited, but I would allow students to utilize an additional genre of their choice that they may want to pursue in their future.

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Grammar and the Teaching of Writing

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For many students, grammar is a dreadful set of strict rules that are too difficult to remember and follow; however, this is usually because grammar was taught to them as a formal system, independent from the context of writing. On the contrary, grammar is dependent on the situation it is used in, and should be used based on the needs of the audience and goals of the writer (Almeda & Bush, 2012). I would use grammar as a teaching tool to enrich the language of students’ writing. To do so, I would instill in students that they will not be penalized for making grammar errors—rather, they will be praised for risk-taking, and gently (and humbly) corrected.

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Since most students are accustomed to learning grammar separately from the context of their writing, this new way of teaching grammar would need to be introduced in a scaffolded process through the gradual release of responsibility. First, I would model examples and non-examples of grammar in my own writing, then guide students through examining the context, audience, and purpose in mentor texts, have students collaboratively peer edit one another’s work, and finally build the confidence in students to enrich their writing with a belt of grammar tools.

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Writing and Literature

 

Although a small bridge between reading and writing is being made through literary criticism, we must create a student-centered classroom that builds more connections between reading and writing. A response-centered approach assumes that experience with literature is personal, engagement is natural, and students' reactions to what they read is dependent on the purpose the literature serves (95). Therefore, students' interests should dictate what they read and write by expanding the range of responses to include informal writing, drama, oral and aesthetic expression, and media activities. Diverse literature should be explored to expose students to multiculturalism, fostering a self-awareness and an awareness for others, in addition to the social, political, and historical structures that are still relevant to their lives. I strongly believe that journaling before, during, and after reading helps students react, process, make connections, and take a stance on literature. If students begin with informal writing and are gradually released responsibility toward more formal writing, students will become acclimated to written and verbal communication, skills that are essential in the real world.

 

Therapeutic Writing

 

In school, students rarely get the opportunity to write without having to worry about spelling, sentence structure, grammar, or the grade. I strongly believe, and research shows, that there are major benefits to deeply reflecting important emotional issues through writing; these benefits include improvements emotionally, as expected, but also include improvements physiologically and behaviorally, and of course, improves literacy skills. Journaling will be an activity that occurs weekly in my classroom, and I will encourage students to journal in their free time as well. Many people experience some type of emotional stress, trauma, and hardship by the time they reach high school, and writing about those experiences helps students process their emotions, make connections between cause and effect, and gives students a voice to communicate their thoughts. Through therapeutic writing, students have the chance to write for themselves without fear of being marked down for mechanical mistakes: students become more comfortable communicating their thoughts, practice writing with clear language and coherent structure, and experience what it is like to write with purpose and audience. I know from experience how therapeutic writing made me a better writer overall, and similarly, it will serve as a gateway for students to begin writing argumentatively in an analysis, informatively to convey ideas, and narratively to tell stories.

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Works Cited

Almeda, C., & Bush, J. (2012). The Grammar of Context: Breakfast, Bumper Stickers, and Beyond. Language Arts Journal of Michigan, 27 (2).

Pennebaker, J. (1997). Writing about Emotional Experiences as a Therapeutic Process. Psychological Science,8(3), 162-166. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40063169

Tchudi, S. J., & Tchudi, S. N. (1999). Extending the Dimensions of Literacy. In The English Language Arts Handbook: Classroom Strategies for Teachers (2nd ed., pp. 154-175). Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook.

Tchudi, S. J., & Tchudi, S. N. (1999). Reading and Responding. In The English Language Arts Handbook: Classroom Strategies for Teachers (2nd ed., pp. 95-109). Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook.

Weaver, C. (1996). Teaching Grammar in the Context of Writing. The English Journal,85(7), 15- 24.