Dave Kemper has been a Contributing Partner with Write Source since 1986. He has co-authored the complete line of Write Source handbooks and writing texts. In addition to his editorial work, Dave has presented at national writing conventions and has conducted writing workshops across the country. His latest project is writing weekly blog entries for UpWrite Press, Write Source’s sibling company, in which he explores a variety of business-writing topics. Prior to his work with Write Source, Dave taught literature and writing for eleven years.
“The universe of discourse is broad indeed and ranges from utilitarian and scientific uses of language to the most artful and playful literature. Likewise, it extends from public communication to private self-communication. Students need to learn how to compose and comprehend the spectrum.”
—James Moffett, co-author of Student-Centered Language Arts, K-12
At the beginning of Seeking Diversity, author Linda Rief recalls sharing an editorial with her students. One of her students wanted to know where he could send his response to the opinion piece. Rief had to tell the young man that he couldn’t send it because the editorial was several years old. As she states, “It was just an exercise to get you to write a persuasive piece.” The student replied that he had never heard of anything so stupid; he wanted the editor to read his response. From then on Rief “concentrated on making the writing [in her class] real—for genuine purposes. Not simply a ’stupid’ exercise.”
“Writing is learned by imitation. If anyone asked me how I learned to write, I’d say I learned by reading the men and women who were doing the kind of writing I wanted to do and trying to figure out how they did it.”
I remember very well a vocabulary unit I had planned. I had gathered all kinds of interesting information about words, including how words are added to the language, how their usage changes over time, and so on. I enjoyed every minute of my research and couldn’t wait to share my findings with the students. Unfortunately, they didn’t share in my enthusiasm, no matter what I tried. I might just as well have given them a list of ten words and told them to define each one and use it in a sentence. (more…)
A recent PBS documentary about China began with these words boldly appearing on the screen:
By three methods, we may learn wisdom:
First, by reflection, which is noblest;
Second, by imitation, which is easiest;
And third, by experience, which is the bitterest.
“Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.”
—Malcolm S. Forbes
I’m big on student-centered learning. That’s why I’m such a strong proponent of using the workshop approach to help students develop their writing skills. (See my blog entry “Writing Workshops: The Only Way to Go.”) This past week I read an encouraging post, “Teaching Without a Script,” on the New York Times‘ Lesson Plans blog. In that essay, Matthew Kay describes his teaching experience at the Science Leadership Academy (SLA) in downtown Philadelphia, and, as he puts it, things are so good that teachers and students are reluctant to leave at the end of the school day:
“Don’t say the old lady screamed—bring her on and let her scream.”
—Mark Twain
Be more specific. Give me an example. Show, don’t tell. How often does a writing teacher write or state these words during the school year? Too many times to count, right? We’ve heard of teachers who have had special stamps made because they’ve become so tired of writing “Give me an example” on student papers. The problem is, of course, that students too often state general idea after general idea in their writing without incorporating specific examples to support their generalizations.
The National Writing Project (NWP) has caught my attention again. In my last blog entry, “Writing to Learn Revisited…Again,” I expressed my concern (alarm?) about an Education Week article discussing a writing-to-learn workshop for teachers in Oakland, California. As I stated, writing to learn has been around forever, and I thought it was pretty much a standard teaching strategy known about and used by most teachers. I also called NWP’s effectiveness into question since they are still spreading the word about writing to learn, some 20 or 30 years after it was first introduced.
Education Week published an online article called “Writing to Learn” on August 27. Since I write about writing, and believe strongly in writing as a learning tool, I was interested in what the article had to say. My guess was that it would explain that writing to learn is a common strategy used in today’s classrooms—and that it is proving to be an effective learning tool for students.
Writing is essentially a solitary act wherein writers put their fingers to the keyboard or pen to paper to create something that is truly their own. But writing should also be a communal or shared activity. Most writers, in fact, do their best work when they have the support of their peers. As educators Dan Kirby and Tom Liner state in their book Inside Out, “…learners and writers need to construct personal versions of the world around them, but then they also need to submit those unique versions to peers for response, negotiation, and confirmation.”
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