Blog #10: Dominic Lopez

 

               For this week, these are the things that caught my attention that I wanted to discuss: 

1.) In the St. Peter piece, what caught my attention is that she asserts that teachers should be having students write to address rhetorical situations that they will encounter outside of the classroom and in the professional realm. To that end, I like that she endorses having students engage in creative writing assignments that explore multiple genres of writing. I like this framework for teaching writing to students because it helps develop writing skills that will help them get jobs and be successful in their lives with things such as writing for digital media following the completion of their education. I think that this will increase their motivation and confidence in writing because they will be acquiring useful and applicable writing skills that will be relevant to their lives instead of the traditional academic writing assignments that they aren’t usually interested in. 

2.) In chapter 13 of the Lindemann text, it was interesting that she discusses that teachers need to make our lesson plan for writing assignments and the directions for these assignments as clear and as specific as possible for students to understand and perform well with them. I agree with her that we should do what we can to anticipate the problems students may encounter with these assignments and plan solutions for these. Our objective outcomes for student learning and the process by which they complete these writing assignments should be planned out in detail so that we can monitor their progress and see what works and what doesn’t work with our writing assignments. Things like considering the audience the student is writing for, seeing how an assignment is useful for students to apply to the real world, designing assignments that can apply to the experiences of students and their interests, and so on, are all important for increasing the success of the writing assignments we give to students in improving their writing and learning. 

3.) Lindemann also suggests an aspect of preparing for teaching students writing that I hadn’t thought of before in chapter 13 of the text: getting to know what you can about your students before you start teaching them, such as their cultural background and their experiences they are likely to have had. You can also find out what kinds of reading and writing they are familiar with, have them reflect on their own writing, and what their interests are. I like the idea of doing this during the first few weeks of class by asking students to write about these things so that you can reflect on what they write about and adjust your teaching accordingly. She also emphasizes the importance of knowing if any of your students require special services or have any types of learning challenges. All of these things will help you as a teacher to design writing assignments that students can learn best from because you can make them relevant to their interests, background, and learning style.