Blog 6: Dear Dr. Jones

Dear Dr. Jones,

I can’t believe that we are already half way through the semester. It feels like the weeks are flying by. I’m even surprised at how fast the actual class goes by each week.

I was a little nervous for this class at the beginning of the semester. I’ve never been really good at writing and always get nervous when I see that a class has a bunch of writing assignments. Having writers workshop incorporated in class each week has helped me to be less nervous. It gives me time to work on all the different writing assignments and to think about all the ideas that we discussed in class. I expected that the class would be about writing in the different genres but I didn’t think that I would be writing little pieces in each of those genres. I love the fact that I am able to learn how to write in all these different genres because I never really knew how.  I tend to write the same way for every piece of writing. I now know that you need to shift how you are writing based on what the purpose of your writing is and who the given audience is.

In elementary school, I was taught that writing was always just responding to a given prompt. My teachers always told me that writing had to be written in a formal manner. While reading The Framework for success, I was able to see that there are multiple habits of mind that affect the way students approach. The article identifies eight features “Curiosity, Openness, Engagement, Creativity, Persistence, Responsibility, Flexibility, Metacognition” (Council of Writing Program Administrators, National Council of  Teachers of English, & National Writing Project, 2011, p. 1). By writing theses blog entries every week, I have had to work on my openness and engagement mindset. Writing a blog entry is different than writing a formal paper because you are writing to a different audience in a different style. With writing theses entries, I have to make sure that I’m writing my ideas in a way that is engaging for the readers and open enough for the readers to see what my thoughts are.  I have developed a stronger rhetorical knowledge and now understand that who you are writing to and why you are writing, should drive determine how you write.

One thing that I absolutely love, is the idea of journaling and free writing. While reading Tompkins, I was able to see that there are so many benefits to having students write in journals. Journals can be used as a way for students to record their thinking as they are learning a new subject or they can be used as a safe space for students to write what they are feeling. I definitely want to make sure that I give my students the chance to journal and free write during the day so they can write creatively.  I can definitely see how my writing is benefitting from having writers workshop as the second half of class every week so I plan on using writing workshop within my own classroom.  One instructional strategy that I would want to use is having a chart of the all the writing stages with clips that the students can move to show what strategy they are on. I think it is important to give the students the time that they need for each stage but also remind them that they go through each one as well. Another activity that I think is very beneficial is giving the students the time to share their writing with their peers. Tomkins says “After the reading, classmates clap and offer compliments. They may also make other comments and suggestions, but the focus is on celebrating completed writing projects, not on revising the compositions to make them better” (Tompkins, 2019, p. 27). It’s important to give the students a space where they can celebrate all the hard work that they put into their writing.

Ways to be motivated to write

One struggle that I am having with our genre writing project, is thinking of what I want to write. I’m struggling to determine who I want the audiences to be for my three pieces and what genre I want to them write in. When it comes to writing, I struggle with finding the motivation to write. Ever since I was younger, I never liked writing and I struggle with figuring out the perfect word order. I need to keep reminding myself that it is okay if my writing is not perfect in the prewriting stage, since that is the stage I’m just starting to get my ideas down

 

Council of Writing Program Administrators, National Council of  Teachers of English, & National Writing Project. (2011).  Framework for success in postsecondary writing.  Retrieved from http://wpacouncil.org/framework/

Hompkins, G. (2017). Journal writing every day: Teacher says it really works! [Web page]. https://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/curr144.shtml

Sun, T. (2017). 30 little ways to motivate yourself to write, right now. The writing cooperative [blog page] https://writingcooperative.com/30-little-ways-to-motivate-yourself-to-write-right-now-9982e80c408d

Tompkins, G. E.  (2019). Teaching writing:  Balancing process and product (7^th ed.).  Upper Saddle River, NJ:  Merrill.