I feel like chapter one reiterated multiple points I have been familiarized with over and over again. It seems obvious to me that the more apprehensive a student is about their writing, the lower the quality of the writing is going to be. It also seems obvious that reading helps promote good writers and that the two come hand in hand. I can not really imagine an English classroom without reading or writing. The question that I have is if marking a student's essay up with red pen heightens their anxiety towards writing then how do we express to the students what they did wrong and right within their essays? Perhaps we could return the essays unmarked, talk over a few key points that the students had difficulties with and then give them the opportunity to redo them? I'm not really sure, but it seems to me that corrections do need to be made. Perhaps we can focus on the positive as well as the negative when returning papers and also have some writing which is simply for completion points that only receives positive feedback?
Another issue I had with the chapter was the activites that were suggested for team building. I don't know if you all agree or not but they seemed a little young for high school students. I remember when we would do some of these activities it was more moan and groan for a lot of students because many of them are activites that seem to be designed for ten year olds. I think there are better ways to build community such as students interviewing each other and presenting information on each other to the class or bringing songs they feel represent themselves. I do like the letter to the teacher idea though.
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You obviously totally understand the importance of reading and writing going hand-in-hand, but you'd be surprised how many English classrooms don't incorporate that philosophy!
One way I avoided the red-in stressor was to respond on the computer, using the review tool. It was less stressful, it utilized their thoughts along with mine, and I still got my point across.
As for the activities seeming like they're for younger kids, that all depends on the community you've built. High school kids LOVE picture books as long as the teacher establishes WHY you're reading them...if you take it from the standpoint of, "Hey, what does this have to offer US, and how do you think you'd do writing them?" If teachers take it from the standpoint that picture book authors make a LOT of money when they're succesful, it's seen differently. They groan when they have to balance a checkbook in math too, but it doesn't mean they can't be taught the value of it and that it can't be done in a more fun way...
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