Reflecting
A little reflection about what I have learned about writing this year.
Looking back, I can see that my high school English teachers were slaves to the five paragraph essay. I don’t remember any of them explaining about how the five paragraph essay is a universal way to organize and develop ideas. I don’t recall any of them saying “Think about the person reading your writing” or “Help the reader out by paragraphing.” I actually don’t think they ever brought up the idea of “the reader” – the person/s who needed to make sense of my writing. I struggled learning the writing concepts of organization and development. I also remember struggling with creating a good topic sentence – a sentence broad enough to encapsulate the ideas contained within a given paragraph. And, when I was off to college and cranking out research papers – I struggled even more putting together a coherent paper. I’m sure some of you can relate.
You’re thinking - So what? Well…what if elementary teachers introduced the ideas of the “reader” or the idea of organization early on – from the beginning of the writing process? You may argue that if Stachura struggled with these concepts in high school, wouldn’t my third graders struggle as well? Perhaps just the opposite. Maybe we should talk early on about how authors are always aware of who will be reading their work – and that awareness makes them edit and revise and revise and edit and do it until they get it right. Maybe earlier on it would help our students organize their writing if they authors can use different organizational patterns to structure their writing. And, certainly using mentor texts to teach about these two concepts – reader and organization – may pay off when our students are struggling to compose a meaningful piece of writing.
Not going to be a cake walk – but I do know that light bulbs went on for me when I was writing to a reader and when I became familiar with several common organizational patterns used by authors.
But circling back to my beginning (that’s a common organizational pattern to circle back) I do rely on aspects of what I learned with the five paragraph essay. It would be interesting to sit in on high school English classes today to see and hear how these same teachers are teaching writing – hopefully they have gotten better at encouraging and supporting solid writing practices because their students will need these skills in today’s world.
Marty
Looking back, I can see that my high school English teachers were slaves to the five paragraph essay. I don’t remember any of them explaining about how the five paragraph essay is a universal way to organize and develop ideas. I don’t recall any of them saying “Think about the person reading your writing” or “Help the reader out by paragraphing.” I actually don’t think they ever brought up the idea of “the reader” – the person/s who needed to make sense of my writing. I struggled learning the writing concepts of organization and development. I also remember struggling with creating a good topic sentence – a sentence broad enough to encapsulate the ideas contained within a given paragraph. And, when I was off to college and cranking out research papers – I struggled even more putting together a coherent paper. I’m sure some of you can relate.
You’re thinking - So what? Well…what if elementary teachers introduced the ideas of the “reader” or the idea of organization early on – from the beginning of the writing process? You may argue that if Stachura struggled with these concepts in high school, wouldn’t my third graders struggle as well? Perhaps just the opposite. Maybe we should talk early on about how authors are always aware of who will be reading their work – and that awareness makes them edit and revise and revise and edit and do it until they get it right. Maybe earlier on it would help our students organize their writing if they authors can use different organizational patterns to structure their writing. And, certainly using mentor texts to teach about these two concepts – reader and organization – may pay off when our students are struggling to compose a meaningful piece of writing.
Not going to be a cake walk – but I do know that light bulbs went on for me when I was writing to a reader and when I became familiar with several common organizational patterns used by authors.
But circling back to my beginning (that’s a common organizational pattern to circle back) I do rely on aspects of what I learned with the five paragraph essay. It would be interesting to sit in on high school English classes today to see and hear how these same teachers are teaching writing – hopefully they have gotten better at encouraging and supporting solid writing practices because their students will need these skills in today’s world.
Marty
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