Which do you think works better in teaching writing process? How do you instruct or guide students in your class? Do you favor one approach over the other for writing instruction? Are there situations where you use both?
Monday, March 25, 2013
Week Six--Optional Post
Which do you think works better in teaching writing process? How do you instruct or guide students in your class? Do you favor one approach over the other for writing instruction? Are there situations where you use both?
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I feel like I use a mix of the two teaching methods in my writing class. I do direct instruction with my students to start out, and then after showing them what good writing looks like, or doing a "mini-lesson", I then take a step back and become the facilitator to their writing process. This class has helped me to feel more confident in taking a step back and to realize that not all of my students write at the same pace, or most especially, the same way!
ReplyDeleteAs Jessica, I use a mixture of instruction. The only time we do writing in class is when we do summaries of our weekly reading stories and a minor amount in Math. I do not consider myself a writing teacher and feel very ill equipped to teach it. But, when I do I use direct instruction, collaboration and modeling. My kids have gotten a little better at writing complete sentences. But more often than not they write run on sentences because they write the way they speak, consequently I get a lot of ‘and thens’ in a sentence. Presently, we are still working on knowing when to end a sentence and how to build into paragraphs.
ReplyDeleteThe kids hate writing as it is so difficult for them, hence I attempt a lot of activities to get them to write. Last year we made an online photo album from pictures they took or of family members. Each page had a description of the pic and/or why the family pictures, or even the ones they took, were important to them. It was a great project. We ordered the book and they were able to keep them. I have done this several different years with my kids.
Walk around just about any middle or high school, glance through the door window and you will see teachers standing and delivering.
ReplyDeleteI would guess that 90 percent of teaching is teacher-centered direct instruction. The constructivist approach (or "student-centered" philosophy) is rare.
As a teacher who tries to facilitate students in a constructivist methodology, I've found that the greatest obstacle to this approach is not the teacher-centered curriculum I'm supposed to be using, and not administrative pressure, but the students themselves.
Students find a class where they actually have the chance to make decisions over their own learning awkward. They quickly interpret the student-centered classroom as the "easy" class. They don't have to shut up and listen to a lecture and take notes. They just have to do "the work," which is "hard," because, of course, it is boring.
"Rigor" is teacher-centered, textbook requirements, worksheets and expectations with the consequent external motivators of grades.
"Listen to my lecture, because I am the content expert," the behaviorist teacher attests.
I asked my students the other day: "In how many of your other classes does the teacher lecture?"
"This is the only class that's different," I heard.
So, regardless of what approach is better, American schools are predominately direct-instruction.
And, from what I've found, the problems students have with writing are a result of stand and deliver. "Write an essay, use the six traits, and I'l grade it when it's done."
But as Nagin points out in "Because Writing Matters," "Decades of research have shown that instructional strategies such as isolated skill drills fail to improve student writing" (p. 22). A careful reading of Nagin, or Murray, Graves, Calkins, etc. shows that the teaching of writing is best done as an inquiry-based process. How do you direct-instruction questioning? The two are logically at odds.
The best teachers, after all, don't tell you "what to see."