So here’s the thing, writing is not easy. There are just about a million things you have to remember to make it grammatically correct, and on top of that there’s the part about actually creating good writing that people wanna read! I know I make it look easy but the truth is most times I have no idea what I’m doing, I just write and hope for the best. So if writing can be tricky, well I can only imagine how interesting teaching to write is gonna be. So I’m an English major right? So I do enjoy writing, even if it is difficult and time consuming I get a sort of satisfaction from seeing my words take shape on a page, but here’s the kicker, even if I love writing it doesn’t mean my students will. In fact many of them might just feel the exact opposite about it. That’s why right now in my classes I’m putting everything into trying to ready myself to become a great writing mentor for my future students, and that mean learning from great teachers. Recently I’ve been reading Jim Burke’s The Six Academic Writing Assignments: Designing the Users Journey, and its chock full of great ideas and strategies for helping to guide ones students onto the path of becoming an individual who loves writing. So here are three of those ideas that I’m planning to bring along with me into the classroom, hope you can get something out of them too!
In Jim Burke’s first chapter he introduces us to his idea of Writing to Learn or WOL, and how to instill in out students a desire to learn through their writing. These assignments of WOL would include self-evaluation, structured note taking, or even collaborating with other students. These type of assignments help to grow the student as a writer and help them improve and grow.
I never really liked annotating when I was in school, I always felt like it took away the magic of reading. I was being ripped out of my exciting book for of mystery and magic, to underline a comment about personification… how lame is that? Jim Burke talks about annotating and how it can both help and hurt. Annotation is no doubt a very critical strategy, one that can help a students remember and understand a book better. However on the other side of the argument it is not the end all be all when it comes to studying a book and we have to be able to communicate this to our students and understand that sometimes annotating takes the magic out of reading.
One thing I think we all hated when we were in school was timed writing exercises. I like to plan out my writing, if even juts a little so having to do on the spot writing is not something I’m fond of. It always stressed me out having such little time to prepare and then write god knows how much. In fact Jim Burke says that in his survey of one hundred college English students almost all of them ranked it as the most difficult type of writing assignment. (The Six Academic Writing Assignments: Designing the Users Journey). Jim Burke Tackles this issue in chapter three of his book, he calls it Writing on Demand, or WOD. He talks about the issues with WOD often stem from the question asked to students, and we as teachers sometimes have the opportunity to tweak the question to make it more approachable to students. As English teachers we have to be aware of the language used in questions, and help out students be aware of it as well.
These are just three of the lessons that I have been learning on my journey with Burke’s book, and I hope to learn many more as I continue on, but I thought that these three would be particularly helpful to anyone who like me is still worried about going into a classroom for the first time as a teacher. With these lessons we can take steps to being the best teachers that we can be.
Cheese Bistro 