Engaging Writing in the Classroom

Engaging Writing in the Classroom

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Wow. That was neat. I just clicked a "share this" deal on Will Richardson's blog and it posted for me. So now I'll add my two cents.

This touches on something that was mentioned in that cute little promotional video below. Connecting to existing skill sets in our students in order to enhance learning is something that seems obvious, but it isn't always. My students can text in the middle of class, nearly blind as they attempt to hide the phone from me, and still wind up with information getting through to someone, somewhere. Now that information may not be educational (or it could be the answers to my test), but it is still information. One of Georgia's writing standards deals with writing in different genres. So the connection there is a "duh" moment, but why can't we make the jump as teachers?

I think it has to do with values. What I value and what the kids value are often totally different things- this holds true when talking about format. But when we look at writing and we evaluate for purpose and audience, we may have a crossover there. An essay and a text message are the same in purpose sometimes- to inform if we're talking expository writing. So we can connect to the students' abilities to inform- code switch and transfer the information from "txt" to actual formal writing and we're halfway there. Audience can also be a crossover when we deal with certain types of essays, again-expository works here. Our kids already know how to write to inform and how to change their languages to fit their audience, so why can't they do it when we get down to essay time?

Because they don't know that they know. That's the simple answer, not to get into a "whose on first" style discussion, but that's the nuts and bolts. Students don't always make the connections between what they live and what we try to teach. That's the true barrier to learning. Connectivity. They are plugged into their world and culture and are ploped down in our classroom culture. They don't own it. They don't see how it matters to them in the "real" world that they live in and we try to infiltrate with novels and literary terms and quadratic equations. So what, who cares, what will this do for me after graduation-I'm not going to college? These questions are always in the minds of our students, we can either deal with it and address it, or ignore it and let it keep cutting us off from our kids.

So how do we do this? How can we harness their raw writing power? How to we turn txters into formal writers? How can I plug my kids into the classroom?

Honestly, I don't know. But I'm willing to talk about it and see what you, the blogosphere, have in your portfolio or rabbit's hat. How do we deal with this? How do we plug our kids into the classroom? I think this is a great question to start with for our discussion groups at SI.