The Purpose of this writing course is to elaborate on ideas the students have about the next steps in their lives and to prepare them with the reading and writing that will be practiced.
- It's important to think critically to move beyond the initial reaction of a text
- Keeping your own opinion while reading supports critical thinking which helps students understand where the author is coming from
- Using the ideas of others to support or extend a discussion about what students want to say is very important to individual learning
Idea Chunks
- Short pieces of writing to help students understand ideas and shape their own thinking while being able to put them down on paper
- captures specific ideas, support for those ideas, and the importance of those ideas
- 1-3 paragraphs long, NOT AN ESSAY
- makes a connection between information and personal experience
- Students benefit more from open-ended composing decisions to provide opportunity for continued development of focus instead of imposing forms and formats on the writing that must be followed
- features such as how many paragraphs or pages being required should not be which just ends up being unproductive and taking the focus off of the actual writing assignment
Setting
- Students are able to work more flexibly allowing invention and discovery rather than just surrounding them with notes
Tips
- Have students sit down after reading and looking over their notes and have them set those aside and write a letter that they haven't prepared for and see where the student's mind goes
- When they feel like they've written enough about an idea have them move on to the next point, even if it doesn't follow the first point neatly
- Have them write for 20 minutes, the key is write fast, focus on ideas, and produce as many thoughts as possible
- Students should use websites as tools and use the same strategies used on regular texts when working on websites to help with decisions about what is coming next
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