Chapter 10

Chapter 10 blog

Writing across the curriculum

I am all about unique ways to incorporate writing in the classroom. Last semester in our EDMS class, each teacher set up a mock lesson for one of the four core subject areas. Hilary taught the English class, and her lesson plan and activity focused on finding all the creative ways to bring writing into the classroom in a fresh way. I am not big on writing at all, but her method really engaged me on this topic in a way I haven’t been in a long time.

            The technology tip in this chapter related to this way of finding new ways to incorporate writing. We even used wikispaces in our last EMAT project to help us get away from traditional ways of relaying information through writing. These ideas along with blogs, wordless, podcasts, and more are all ideas that I would be more than willing to try in my classroom. Since I am not big on writing myself, I know I will be finding every way in the world to bring new light to this topic for students who are like me.

            I also feel like writing has also been taught to me in such a boring and monotonous way and I want to help it be more engaging for the students when writing is necessary in my class. It has been taught as such a straight forward and linear way with so much structure. I understand the necessity for that when initially teaching a concept, but I was never given the opportunity to relay my ideas in any other fashion and by any other process. Using these alternative ways keeps you away from this step-by-step process and allows you to be more creative. I can foresee ideas being better received when they are conveyed through many different styles.

            If I even put my teacher hat on, I believe I would feel the same way about writing. I would much rather grade tons of assignments that were each unique in the way the information and ideas were presented. I would much rather watch some podcasts, read some blogs, explore some wikis, and read some papers instead of just reading a stack of papers. I do not envy English teachers that have to read countless essays and papers.

            I enjoyed the list of effective writing recommendations the author listed from Graham and Perin. This could be very helpful in the classroom one day. RAFT could be fun to implement in the classroom one day too. I could see students putting more effort in this kind of assignment, and it also fits under the umbrella of alternative writing assignments.

            I definitely look forward to incorporating journals in my science classroom one day. Doing assignments in a journal somehow seems less monotonous than just writing for the sake of writing. It is something the students can have some creativity with and take ownership of. One of our TA’s in our ESCI class used this idea of journals in the science classroom as her research for her degree. She taught us a bit about them and helped me decide that it was a very valuable tool in the middle school science classroom.

            I also enjoyed the biopoem we did at the beginning of class. There would be a lot of room for creativity with this assignment both on the students’ and the teacher’s part.

Articles

Poems:

            That was a brilliant way to incorporate writing, and especially poems, in the math classroom. I can’t say I would have ever thought about that. I am storing that idea away in my little toolbox. Maybe I will get to use it one day. I wonder what other math ideas would make for good poetry.

Technology:

This was a reminder of how science still requires a lot of reading and writing and comprehension. Using the graphic organizer to structure the order of the sentence and paragraph reminds me of a twist on the old reading comprehension that would be found on standardized tests and such. Teaching the students to understand the author’s main ideas and intentions becomes very important as students later do their own research or start reading the research of other scientist. This example was just one of the countless ways to include math, technology, and reading together. I can only imagine I could find plenty more with a little research.

Writing in Math:

Well, I agree with what is being communicated in this article. I ultimately feel that I have heard everything it had to say at this point. I understand the importance of writing well, I have heard of how to incorporate this, and I have heard their general ideas on how to accomplish this task. Maybe I have just read too much at this time or I am missing out, but this article did not really shed any new light.

Writing to Learn Across the Curriculum:

Even as it is in the title, I feel this article is a supplement to what I just read in this last chapter. I could view it as a bit of a summary, but it did have some different examples and activities. Some of the strategies mentioned and used sounded interesting to me, but some did not really have enough on them. They were all referenced well though, and it might be beneficial to read up on their references. I think this article would have been more interesting had I read it first instead of after the chapter and after the other articles. I think it would benefit me to reread it with fresh eyes another day. I did enjoy the writing style more than that of our textbook and I feel I would actually get more out of this article than I did the chapter if I spent some more time with it later. That is my plan right now.