As I began to delve a little deeper into the focus of my writing paper, I took another step backward to see if I could figure out why my adult students may have been so reluctant to use a form of new literacy to discuss a book. Perhaps, it was not the blogging itself after all. (I am still not sure of that.) What I do know is that while I was doing research about family literacy and teaching adults who are working to improve their basic math and literacy skills (many of which are in hopes of earning a General Educational Development diploma), I found some interesting things about the writing process itself. I was reading part one of five of an article published by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Education, entitled The Five Features of Effective Writing: 1 Teaching the Features of Effective Writing. (This particular article was written by Cali and Bowen.) These researchers have determined that the five features of effective writing are “focus, organization, support and elaboration, style and conventions” (Cali & Bowen, p. 1).
Focus here refers to the topic chosen by the writer in response to a writing assignment/task. Organization is the “progression, relatedness, and completeness of ideas” (Cali & Bowen, p. 1). Support and elaboration refer to how the topic is developed through the writing. The writer’s style depends on the audience, purpose and is portrayed through their word choice. Lastly, are the writing conventions, which involve “correctness in sentence formation, usage and mechanics” (Cali & Bowen, p. 1).
Perhaps, it was the last two (style and conventions) of these features that “scared” my students the most. Although I gave them a general topic to write about-anything related to what we were just reading about in our book, maybe they worried about the grammatical issues that their unknown audience may be reading. Because it was a blog they were using, anyone could view it if they knew the particular blog’s web address. I wonder if they were worried about how their ideas would be conveyed. I thought the students would like a little freedom in their writing, but maybe the topic I gave should have had some more guidelines.
In addition to these five features about writing, I am seeing many articles about writing that proclaim how important it is to have students and teachers reflect on their writing. Reflecting about the process of writing is beneficial to both the reader and writer. I am not sure I will ever find out the exact reason why, but I am going to continue reflecting on my teaching until I reach what seems like a reasonable explanation.
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One way to get students in the habit of reflecting on their writing is to require them to submit a Dear Teacher letter with each paper. This is an informal letter (usually a few paragraphs) written to the teacher which discusses the students' perceived strengths, weaknesses, and concerns about a paper.
ReplyDeleteNot only does this help students reflect on their writing, it also gives teachers some guidance about what kind of feedback the writer is open to. If a student tells you she is concerned about her punctuation in the Dear Teacher letter, it's more likely she'll be receptive to help with comma errors. It's also great insight into what students perceive as "good writing." If a student cites his or her strength is spelling and the weakness is grammar, you know the student needs some guidance in thinking about content and organization.