Writing Instruction in the Classroom

As we talked about writing instruction in class discussion yesterday, I was trying to remember the types of writing I see in my field. The only writing our students ever to is a couple times a week for about 15 minutes before lunch. They write stories that have happened to them before and the stories have to have a beginning, middle and end. About once a month our students pick one of the stories they have written that they want published. They go through the story to look for errors then they have the teacher edit it and then in their best handwriting they rewrite the story on publishing paper. I think this is a really good process that the students are learning, but it frustrates me that they only stick to the same genre and that they are always doing the same assignment. I think the students would benefit a lot by writing about other things. The only other time they write in class is on worksheets from science or social studies.

Also, writing time often gets pushed aside to do other activities like continuing centers or doing IOWA practice. I think the students are really loosing out on writing because their program is so reading focused I think they need more of a balance of both. It is great that the students are learning the writing process, but I think they need to practice more and with more subjects.

After talking about writing in class yesterday there a some elements of writing I would like to see in my own classroom. I read Tompkins chapter 14 this week, I really enjoyed the ideas for putting reading and writing together. I used to be a horrible writer, but an avid reader and eventually my reading helped my writing. I think that the two subjects are very closely related. Students would benefit a lot by writing about what they read and vise versa, and I think this needs to be incorporated in all subjects, not just language arts. I would love to see writing and reading incorporated into all subjects. Also books on subjects like science and social students can be incorporated into language arts. By combining genres and subjects students understand that everything overlaps, just like it does in the real world. I think that writing is so important and it will be a major part of my classroom. I wish that the students in my field placements had more opportunities to write and share their ideas because writing really does create an avenue where students thoughts and ideas can be heard.