"The pen is mightier than the sword."
Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
We have all heard the saying the pen is mightier than sword and have read words that moved us to love, cry, think and reflect in ways that no external force could ever. But how does the pen became mightier than the sword? One would never literally stare at a pen and expect for it on its own to write us a letter. That would be absurd! Then pen needs a hand to guide it. The hand needs to be connected to brain to form the words. It's a process not a phenomenon, we know that, of course we do! And yet, time and time again, student are told to write. Five paragraph essays! Don't forget the introduction! Check your spelling. And when we are not satisfied with what their pens have wrought we look at the papers and say
"They can't write!”
“ It's because they play video games.”
The fix to this dilemma? More essays. Afterall, practice make perfect.
BUT PRACTICE DOESN’T MAKE PERFECT WHEN PRACTICE IS FLAWED
The exceptions know how to write or read without every being taught. Most kids are not the exceptions and so they have to be taught. They need strategies, purposeful instruction, time to think, talk, collaborate and write. And then do it all again and again, producing, reflecting, producing, editing, producing, thinking.
In “A Range of Writing Across the Content Areas,” Fisher and Frey (2013) offer 3 strategies, Power Writing, Shared Writing and Writing from Sources, that can be implemented across content areas to improve student writing.
According to Fisher and Frey (2013) Power Writing is a daily one to three minute written response to a content area word or phrase. Fisher and Frey (2013) add that students keep a graph of how many words they write in each round to track their writing fluency and read their writing to check for errors. Fisher and Frey (2013) add that errors students are not self-detecting can become insight for teachers to decipher student error patterns and further instruction.
Shared Writing, according to Fisher and Frey (2013) is a strategy teachers and students use to collaborate on a piece of writing, even forming a question and explaining a possible solution.
Fisher and Frey (2013) state that students should annotate as they read texts to help facilitate their own writing in Writing from Sources to Inform and Explain. The annotations help to provide textual evidence and support for their claims and explanations.
In “Teaching Adolescent ELs to Write Academic-Style Persuasive Essays” Ramos (2014) offers The Reading to Learn approach as a strategy to improve writing for ELLs as well as non- ELLS. “The Reading to Learn approach involves moving learners through five key stages designed to support them in reading texts in a particular genre and using what has been learned through reading to write similar texts. These stages are Building Field, Preparing to Read, Detailed Reasoning, Joint Construction, and Individual Construction." (Ramos, 2014, p.658)
According to Ramos (2014) the Building Field stage is a strategy to build background knowledge, the Preparing to Read stage focuses on the understanding the goal and structure of a persuasive essay, the Detailed Reading stage focuses on building an acute awareness of the academic language, organization of texts as well as the author’s view, the Joint Construction stage is a collaborative writing with the students and teacher and finally the Individual Construction Stage where students write independently.
The Situation
After reading several texts on they types of pesticides used on US agricultural and how the use of certain pesticides are lawful in the United States but banned in Europe, students are asked to write a persuasive essay to convince the USDA to continue to allow or make unlawful the use of 3 pesticides that are banned in Europe but not banned in the USA.
Many students feel that the pesticides should be banned but they can not support their opinions with facts or evidence. To help students produce solid sources of evidence the science teacher would supply each student with a copy of text related to the subject and model how as the text is read the reader can annotate the text to identify key words, phrases, important data and statistics. When the students is ready to write their essay they can easily refer to their annotations for textual evidence.
References
Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2013). A Range of Writing Across the Content Areas. Reading Teacher, 67(2), 96-101.
Ramos, K. (2014). Teaching Adolescent ELs to Write Academic-Style Persuasive Essays. Journal Of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 57(8), 655-665.
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Susan,
ReplyDeleteYour opening paragraph was very interesting to read. It is true that rather than take on the responsibilities of explicitly instructing students on how to write and assisting them with becoming stronger writers, many content area teachers simply say that a student cannot write well. Clearly, this does not help students at all. Based on my experience as a secondary student, I was unfortunately never presented with interesting writing assignments that would force me to think outside of the box. However, I love your persuasive prompt about pesticides. Content area teachers must include more writing activities like the one you described into their classrooms. These will allow teachers to work with students to assist them with their writing, and they will also allow for higher levels of student engagement.