Writing to Learn

                The effect of writing on content learning seems to be obvious, but I had never considered there are so many different ways to introduce writing into concept learning.  I also had not thought about it in terms of the PAR framework. We know that writing requires us to organize thoughts and words in a coherent manner in order to put those words and ideas down on paper.  I had not previously considered those thoughts and ideas to be part of the preparation phase of writing. Writing seemed to be more of an assistance and reflective activity. It makes sense though to use writing to prepare for a lesson. Thinking about and discussing what you already know will help, but actually writing it down requires a different level of commitment to organization and formation of thought. By writing our prior knowledge and what we anticipate learning, we are forced to form clear thoughts and ideas. There are not pause words or mid-stream changes in writing. Every sentence is one clear thought from start to finish. I cannot see a better way to get into the frame of mind for a lesson than this. 

                The many different strategies used for assistance and reflection surprise and intrigue me. I’ve noticed poetry mentioned many times in this book. I don’t know if it’s because I am not especially creative or some other reason, but I always struggled with poetry. I didn’t have any great proclivity for seeing beyond the words on the page to the deeper meaning and I hated being asked to write poetry because I just felt inadequate. Does anybody have any ideas for helping students to decide what to put in their poems? How do you teach someone that isn’t artistic to write in our most artistic form?

                In the reflection phase, I really like the RAFT strategy. It is such a good way to get students excited about a topic that requires writing about content. Usually, content writing consists of research papers. Students do not like writing research papers because the form and structure is a lot of work and the form and language used is not the way we speak and communicate in our daily lives. We have to think about how to change our language when we write in an academic fashion and it is painful for young students. The RAFT strategy allows students to take on another role, where they are not simply a student writing a paper, but they get to be a part of the content. It is more fun. It enables the use of imagination. And finally, it can be used in absolutely any subject area. I plan to use this strategy quite a bit when I have my own class.