Writing Instruction

Hinchman:
The chapter emphasized that we do not promote and encourage writing enough in the classroom. Without adequate practice, students do not learn to write for themselves, and instead, they rely on unoriginal, formulated writings. We must teach students to analyze their audience and write, rewrite and rewrite again while they rethink about their topic. Writers' Notebooks seemed to be a great solution. They allow students to write daily in class, go back and review and revise their writing, and give the teacher the opportunity to meet with students individually.

Sweeny:
The article focused on how writing and literacy has changed with technology. Students rely on technology daily and use it for many purposes including "to socialize with friends...to seek out information...[and] to pursue their interests" (124). Because of this, we must begin to incorporate technology in the writing process and show students that their electronic communication is a form of literacy. We can do this by integrating music, online resources, mentor texts from online sources, and word processing. Computer programs allow students to publish their finished products in a variety of formats which help them understand new literacies. There are also a variety of outlets for publication, so students are not limited to writing on paper.

Hansen & Kissel:
The authors broke down writing instruction into three guidelines:
Guideline 1: Writers are decision makers. Students need a safe environment to write in, need to be able to connect to what they're writing about, and need choices and options in their writings. They also need to be able to choose their genre and the way that they will write their final products.
Guideline 2: Writers consider their audience. Students must be aware of the various audiences they write for, so they need experience writing to various ones and they need to be able to adjust their vocabulary and voice for their audiences. Obviously, some audiences are easier to write for, especially their peers, which makes them more passionate about their writing. Finally, teachers need to encourage writing beyond the standardized test writing because they limit and squash students' writing creativity.
Guideline 3: Writers evaluate their drafts. Emphasis should be placed on the writing itself rather than grades so students are more open to writing. Students should be reflect on and evaluate their own writings to improve them, and when writing is taught to the test, students' writing and creativity suffer, and they become less interested in writing. Finally, students flourish when they're able to write/communicate in a way that is comfortable and familiar to them.

Connections:
Text-to-self: Thinking of my own experiences in the classroom, I get more participation and thoughtful responses when students are able to write about themselves or something that is meaningful to them. I am looking forward to finding other formats for their final products, and think that visual literacy and online formats would be interesting to experiment with.

Text-to-world: I think it is difficult at times to remember that social networking and the like fall into the literacy category, but it is an extremely important part of our students' lives, so we have to be cognizant of it and try to incorporate as much technology into our classrooms as possible so that students will embrace literacy and writing more.

Text-to-text: All three texts emphasize the importance of not teaching a prescriptive essay format so that students have the freedom to explore various genres, formats, and audiences. Allowing individual freedoms provides students a safe writing environment where they are more open to exploring new things.

Questions:
1. How do you incorporate social media and visual literacies in your classroom?
2. Have you tried Writers' Notebooks in your room? How much time per class period/week did you devote to writing in them?