In many classrooms through out the world children and adults struggle with writing exercises; this is particularly so for factual inscriptions. Raymond Hackette, 2010, reflects and asks what is the purpose of education and what is the purpose of schools? Most individuals will shout readily, the purpose of education is to get a good job; and the purpose of schools are to get a good education. Raymond Hackette, in his dissertation quotes from Roger Smith, Creating the Effective Primary School: A Guide to School Leaders and Teachers; "The purpose of education can be broken down into four purposes:
1. Intellectual Purposes
2. Social Purposes
3. Emotional Purposes
4. Physical purposes
Bearing this in mind I will epitomize the many crisis that prevent our Children from achieving excellence in writing competencies and endeavours. Now Writing has an intellectual component to it that is often neglected by educators. I do not believe that this is a deliberate act of our teachers but merely a lack of knowledge, skills and attitudes in the writing arena; being able to write proficiently is one thing but teaching writing proficiency is another ideology.
Writing also has a social aspect to it. In our classes we seldom encourage team work, cooperation and collaboration among our students. Just reflect for a while and picture the seating arrangement of students in your classroom. Human beings are social by nature, hence the reason we are dependent on each other for support, praise, motivation and advice.
Students in an emotionally safe writing environment will write without being told, and share their scripts with their peers. If this is done in some classrooms, it is deemed as copying and students are often degraded and demoralized for this act of kindness.
Writing also postulates a physical goal, which should be to allow students the opportunity to spend as much time as is needed to complete the writing process. In the real world educators seldom utilise the Writing Process for one reason or the other. In my conferences with teachers they perceive it as time consuming and infringes on their ability to complete the national curricula. In the Physical feature of writing students must be directed to write for authentic, purposes and audiences.
This might be a mouthful to chew on; however I would make several recommendations in an effort to improve the educational frontier of our country and raise the achievement bars of struggling writers.
- I propose that the Ministry of Education participate in an educational drive to edify teachers on the intricacies of essay writing; the varying challenges students face when writing (e.g. writer's block, sentence construction and fluency); Instructional strategies that will work as well as demonstrations of these strategies.
- Allow students to write for real audiences and purposes.
- Utilise the Writing Process enhanced by the ideologies of 6 traits + 1
- Encourage Writing Groups and socialization among students, as a means of support, scaffolding, building confidence and motivation.
- Develop a library with literature and varying genre of readings for all individuals attached to the learning/teaching milieu.
- Last but not least give students opportunities to write and read collectively and collaboratively. There are so many suggestions that can be giving to improve the writing environment but time does not permit this.
Miss Henry, so much food for thought. It is obvious that you exude passion and commitment to your profession and the knowledge base of students. I agree that an intervention is indeed necessary to promote a greater degree of writing competence and that we as educators must ensure that we are lifelong learners and always seek to improve our strategies and keep abreast of current trends for our own professional development. However I can assure you that there are many of us out there who are as committed as you are and indeed seeking to deliver quality education to meet the needs of all learners despite administrative demands in the rat race to ensure students place in the SEA top ranks. I believe that every child has a "write."Good job Miss Henry!
ReplyDeleteI agree with you 110% concerning the issue of writing in our schools. I, too, feel very strongly about the traditional way of teaching writing.(In fact, one of my posts addresses this concern.)Last term, I had my students engage in authentic writing and I saw the benefits. With one boy, I was amazed at his improvement in spelling certain words. Also, as they re-read their sentences, they recognized that they did not make sense, in some instances, and enthusiastically made the adjustments. Their reading of the sentences also improved. I also enjoyed watching them collaborate with each other as they worked on their assignments. Having experienced this first-hand, I plan to really try the process-approach to writing more extensively next term.
ReplyDeleteI am becoming so 'obsessed' with this new approach so much so that my web 2.0 paper was about the wiki and writing. According to Donald Graves, considered the 'father' of the process approach, this method seems to work effectively with the child who has learning disabilities. Indeed, the authentic approach is the way to go for the benefits are too numerous.
Great minds think alike Miss Homeward cause my web 2.0 paper was also on wiki and writing. It is time that we transform our school environment to a more pragmatic and realistic one; where the ideologies of life long learning will really bear fruits.
ReplyDeleteHey Miss Lisha, i feel you and I know that most administrative heads are about them looking good rather than self actualization of their charges. Though the milieus of school might appear to be dismal there are the educators who remain faithful and committed to their call to duty. Although we might be few in numbers we still exist.