Tyler Morgan December 8, 2011 English 309

Teachers Changing Classroom Writing

ABSTRACT The purpose of this essay is to provide current and future teachers with fresh ideas that are both helpful and successful in assisting students with the difficult task of writing. The motivation for the research is to find and combine different styles that teachers can use to help their students feel more involved in their writing. This essay will examine several styles that will help make writing fun and less stressful, whether that be pre-writing activities, research activities, revision/editing tactics or simply the way teachers grade their work. Teachers are challenged now more than ever to adapt to the outside world and incorporate new strategies into their classrooms daily. This essay draws on extant research as well as a personal interview with a current high school English teacher. The purpose of this paper is to provide examples of ideas and strategies that have been successful in the classroom. Keywords: students, writing, teachers, time, need, grade, research

INTRODUCTION This paper provides current and future teachers with strategies that have been implemented and successful for others. If you have ever taken a class from a teacher that is not clear with their expectations of an assignment you know that teachers can negatively effect a students perception of any given assignment with an ineffective articulation of prompts and specifications. This paper also argues that student writing should not solely be graded on the quality of the work but also the progress that each student makes over a given year or semester. A book focused on rethinking writing instruction for high school classrooms titled Teaching the Neglected R was the main source of the research for this paper. Several chapters inside the book argue, suggest and provide examples for a variety of ideas for teachers. Thomas Newkirk (2007) addresses the need for technological changes inside classrooms. While Jeffrey Wilhelm (2007) argues that students need more informal writing, exploration, and they need to do things that really matter to them(p.10). With the next chapter Donald M. Murray (2007) claims that we are all writers we just need to apply it to writing. In an interview for the book Thomas Newkirk and Richard Kent (2007) discuss in more detail what teachers should really be concerned about when grading the students writing.

METHODS The information in this paper was collected from multiple sources; one being a book authored by Edward M. White titled Assigning, Responding, Evaluating: A Writing Teachers Guide; another being a book of compiled work titled Teaching the Neglected R and from that book chapters written by Thomas Newkirk, Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Barry Lane and Donald. M. Murray are all used. Tamara Cross is a current high school English teacher that was interviewed and asked a set of questions for this paper. Tamara Cross was interviewed with a hope of gaining a deeper knowledge of strategies used in her classroom and her strategies related to the success of her students. This specific teacher was chosen because she an integral part of my desire to become a high school English teacher myself, she makes learning not only fun for her students but relevant to the real world as well (see Appendix A: Teacher Questions for listed questions).

RESULTS/ANALYSIS The youth of America today is overwhelmed with always being on the move and they are expected to be doing something every minute of every day and that hardly leaves time for genuine writing. Donald M. Murray (2007) suggests that we have been writing all our lives, but in our heads, and we just have not applied it to writing. Murray also argues that the best writing comes from contradiction, surprise, uncomfortable insight, a memory that is different from the way you remembered the moment before (p.20). Anyone who has been in contact with adolescents lately should realize that, by this standard, all teenagers should be good writers. Sometimes teachers try to teach the students too much and forget to let them be creative and express themselves in a positive way, which causes the students to resist and it causes the kids more harm than anything.

Using Technology in the Classroom

Since the turn of the century technology has improved at a rapid pace and classrooms are behind in incorporating new technology like blogs for example into the classroom. A lot of schools struggle to provide their students with the proper tools to succeed and the idea of having a computer readily available for each student to use is almost unheard of in many schools. This is something that needs to be changed if kids are ever going to buy in to writing and not just write to satisfy a teacher and get the grade and move on. Thomas Newkirk (2007) argues, We are in a period of unprecedented technological change that calls into question traditional ways of teaching writing (p.1). Kids are reading and writing now more than ever with the combination of the Text Messaging, Internet, Television and reading new magazines and they dont even know it. If students were asked if they spent more time reading or they were asked how much time they spent on Facebook or Twitter they would soon realize they do more reading and writing than they may care to admit. It is not acceptable for teachers to believe that tactics from forty years ago are still going to be effective on the children of America today. Current and future teachers alike need to escape the belief that students cannot learn if their learning is not formal (same as it has been for the last 100 years), because from my experiences, in high school and college level classrooms, informal learning (bringing new insights into the classroom) will allow students to believe in connections with their work and the outside world.

Making Research Relevant

While in college I have been assigned many different topics for research, and have found that it is most important for teachers to make the research relevant to things out in the world while still allowing students to choose topics relevant to them. Adolescents are very open about their lives and what they believe is or isnt important and they wont hesitate to challenge any assignment if they feel like it is irrelevant to the outside world. Allowing the students the freedom to pick something relevant to them will ensure that they care about what it is they are research and will better their final product. Jeffrey Wilhelm (2007) says Students now need more time to immerse themselves in curricular topics, more time to read, write, and reflect; they need more informal writing, exploration, and they need to do things that really matter to them (p.10). Now implementing this into a classroom of 30 teenagers may seem like something that would be easy for all teachers, but then again the only people who would think that are people who have never taught. Teachers do recognize that some assignments are not very appealing to their students, but that it is not because the teachers dont like their students and dont want to give them the freedom to write about things that are appealing. Teachers are required to teach several things throughout a semester and sometimes are handcuffed and do not have sufficient time to allow students to succeed with the required things, and have enough time to allow them to be successful at something that may be more intriguing. Students of all ages are known to cringe just at the mention of a research paper and many teachers are reluctant to assign topics for research. The key for all of research papers lays on the teachers shoulders, because it is up to them to carve out enough time in a lesson to communicate in some way with each student on a possible topic. Students always need some guidance from their teachers so it can be beneficial to give the students a topic to write about but make sure that topic has many sub topics in which the students can connect to individually. Edward M. White (2007) argues Class time should be spent discussing topics, sources and ways of using sources to develop ideas (p.23). This will allow for interaction from student to teacher and will allow the teacher the ability to let the students know whether or not their topic of choice is acceptable. Deadlines are an integral piece of the research process for students; White also suggests there should be several deadlines throughout,

(1) an early one, requiring a thesis statement of the main idea and an annotated bibliography; (2) an intermediate one, requiring a completed draft for peer group evaluation of ideas, organization, and use of sources; and (3) a final deadline for the edited draft, with a high level of polish (p.23). These are good suggestions for teachers to use to include all steps, but White is leaving out one of the most important parts of the writing process for students and that is time built into the schedule for editing/revision. Although research is very important in a research paper, the main focus for the teacher should be that the students are able to practice good writing, and that will not come if editing/revision is left out. The three steps White examines are important and it would be difficult to argue that they wouldnt be successful for some students, but for students to learn fully and retain their knowledge of the material they have research and the skills necessary to write they need to focus on their writing after the research has been successfully completed.

Sequencing Assignments

Breaking down complex assignments into smaller, less intimidating sequences is a great way to assign an essay for students and will cause less stress on the students. Edward M. White (2007) gives an example on how to break down a comparison/contrast paper into four separate parts. (1) summarize text A; (2) summarize text B; (3) list similarities and differences between texts A and B; (4) write an essay in which you develop an idea about the similarities and differences between texts A and B(p.3). These first two activities can be given separately with the students not even realizing what they are building up to, and for the third step the teacher should present the students with their work from the first two activities, along with each text and they can list the similarities as its own activity once again. After the third step is complete the fourth and final step will seem so simple for the students because they have already done most of the hard work with out knowing it and will benefit their understanding of each text and their writing. If students were given these instructions at once and set loose and expected to turn in all this work in a packet a week from the day it is assigned most of them would be completely lost. The students would be so caught up in writing an essay that most would forget the simple steps of summarizing each text for a better understanding and will most likely miss some key similarities and differences in each text.

Grading

Teachers are responsible for a lot of the stress in the lives of their students since in the end we are responsible for assigning them a grade on their work. Unlike math problems or science experiments, writing is not necessarily always perfectly right or completely wrong and teachers can find themselves in difficult situations when grading. Thomas Newkirk and Richard Kent (2007) claim Show us a teacher full at ease with a grading system, one who is sure that his 85 is reliably lower than his 86, and we will show you a fraud or at least someone mildly delusional (p.64). This leads to the question for English teachers, what should a grade be based on? Newkirk and Kent argue that, in their eyes the key is to reward students for diligence and for the quality of writing they produce (p.65). This means that at the beginning of the year or semester it is very important to assess the level at which a student is able to write. It is not fair for a student who comes into your class with limited abilities in writing for the teacher to have the same high expectations as they would for another student who may have been writing an advanced composition classes for the last five years. Within that students need to be aware that if they prove that they can write at a high level, then they are going to be held to a higher standard. There is no perfect method and there will always be students who are unhappy with a grade that they receive on any given writing assignment, but the most effective way is to gauge a the ability of each student and hold them to a certain expectation while grading all students on both hard work and quality.

Teacher Interview

In an interview with Tamara Cross (see appendix for list of questions) regarding the teaching and grading of writing she was able to answer more direct questions regarding the topic of this paper. A theme throughout is creating assignments for students that they will either enjoy or feel are important. In responding to whether or not, as a veteran teacher, she feared the possibility that students may not like an assignment she gives she response, there will always be those students who wont do the work no matter what you do. This is an unfortunate truth for teachers and they need to be able to not take things personally although they truly care about their students. Mrs. Cross suggests that using a rubric that is based on numbers is the best

method while assessing the writing of students and states, this helps take personal feelings out of grading. She also gave an example of a student she has in a class right now who thought he received a poor grade on an essay he wrote about Michael Jackson and the poor grade reflected the fact that she personally doesnt like Michael Jackson. So she had to sit down with the student and point out the deficiencies in his writing before he would let go of the idea that I graded him down based on my music preference. She used a numerical rubric to grade the essay and the fact that that was readily available to present to the student made it that much easier to justify the grade that was given.

Call to Action

These ideas should be useful for future and current teachers alike because they are all methods that have been implemented in a classroom and have been successful. It should also be understood that not everything works for every class and/or student; and because it was successful for the people cited within this essay does not mean that it is a perfect method. All things considered it is clear that all teachers need to be willing to adapt to the outside world and incorporate more informal things into their classrooms.

DISCUSSION

Although a personal interview was done for this paper it would have been more beneficial to have interviewed more teachers and ask more in depth questions, but there were constraints on both time and availability. While most of the research done for this paper produced positive results regarding the topic, Tamara Cross was able to reflect in a less formal way to the questions presented to her and give examples of things that students can take advantage of. Proving the limited time teachers have away from all of their grading and planning, Mrs. Cross was only able to answer a few of the questions given to her. It is interesting to see how little time teachers have for their personal lives away from the classroom; while many people may think that teachers show up when school starts and go home when they the bell rings and do

nothing in between, that is just not the case. Teachers are round the clock workers and future teachers need to be will commit to always finding ways to improve their teaching and putting the students first. The best way to be a great teacher it is necessary to dedicate your life to the students and their success.

APPENDIX A. Teacher Questions

Are there any strategies that you try and use to help students who may be intimidated by the
prospect of having to write an important essay?

While designing a Research Essay is there anything that you do to help students be more
comfortable in the process of researching? Also are there any strategies you use in possibly making it more enjoyable for them?

While designing an important writing assignment do you ever fear that the students may
reject the assignment or not enjoy it?

How do you make sure to effectively articulate prompts and specifications for an assignment? Are there ever times when you feel your grading of a students final product may not be the
grade they actually deserve? If you assign a lower grade do you ever fear of the repercussions that it may cause to the student? Do you ever fear that you may be playing favorite while grading?

REFERENCES

Cross, T. (2011, november 5). Interview by T. Morgan [Personal Interview]. Teacher Questions., Anchorage, AK. Murray, D. M. (2007). Write before writing. In H. Newkirk & R. Kent (Eds.), Teaching the Neglected R (pp. 17-25). Portsmouth, NH: Greenwood International. Newkirk, T. (2007). Looking back to look forward. In H. Newkirk & R. Kent (Eds.), Teaching the Neglected R (pp. 1-9). Portsmouth, NH: Greenwood International. Newkirk, T., & Kent., R. (2007). Faq on grading and assessment. In H. Newkirk & R. Kent (Eds.), Teaching the Neglected R (pp. 64-72). Portsmouth, NH: Greenwood International. White, E. M. (2007). Assigning, responding, evaluating. (Fourth ed., pp. 1-10). Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin's. Wilhelm, J. D. (2007). Thoughts on the twenty-first century classroom:an interview with jeffrey d. wilhelm. In H. Newkirk & R. Kent (Eds.), Teaching the Neglected R (pp. 10-16). Portsmouth, NH: Greenwood International.