What Encompasses Culturally-Relevant Writing?
A Recap of this Semester
Throughout the entirety of our teaching blocks, the foundation of our curriculum has been rooted in creating and sustaining cultural pedagogy. We are very familiar with hearing most of the terms that will be outlined in this article at this point, but it's always important to maintain an awareness of cultural relevance and relaying content back to the students' upbringings, identities, and interests.
What makes up a culturally-relevant writing curriculum?
*link to their website is at the bottom of my blog post
The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) is an EXCELLENT resource where you can find dozens of testimonials, collaborative efforts, and scholarly expertise to aid you in maintaining a lesson plan that is culturally relevant, but still hits all of the points that you need to cover in teaching your curriculum.
Delving into writing, the NCTE defines writing as "the act of creating composed knowledge". The definition itself is very vague, as it is a personal interpretation of what the teachers deems as important when it comes to the 'composed knowledge' in their students' work. Do you choose to focus more on if the student is able to understand the content learned in class? Perhaps you choose to focus on text-to-self reflection and learn more about your students through their own personal interpretations?
When you go into incorporating writing into your literacy block with your own students, it's easy to curate content that instructs summarization of learned content in a story. However, that doesn't allow for our children to resonate with what should be the ultimate goal of culturally relevant writing: to compose content that reflects off of the child's own personal values and takeaways, and blends into knowledge learned at school.
Below, I've included the principles of incorporating culturally-relevant and reflective practices into your own writing curriculum. I've added a very short summary of what each principle covers. These principles can be found on the NCTE's website as well. I hope you find these as helpful in curating your writing content and reflections as I did!
NCTE's Principles of Writing:
Principles 1.1 and 1.2: What's the point of writing?
Principle 1.1: Writing is social and rhetorical.
- Quoted from website: "It takes into account the values, ideologies, interests, needs, and commitments of the people, the audiences, for whom it is intended."
- Also, ALL writing is curated in specific settings and situations within a time period, and reflects the values of that individual and society's input during that time.
Principle 1.2: Writing serves a variety of purposes.
- Like speeches, writing provides a multitude of services. It can be:
- informative (ex. top story news article)
- persuasive (trying to get the reader to agree or disagree with a topic)
- impromptu/personal (ex. diary/journal entries or self-reflections)
- influential (invokes emotions of the reader).
Principles 2.1 through 2.4: How do writers perceive the world?
Principle 2.1: Everyone is a writer.
- Like artists, writers are dynamic- in other words, they're constantly evolving as they develop their writing abilities through practice.
Principle 2.2: Writers bring multiliteracies, and they bring cultural and linguistic assets to whatever they do.
- Students should be able to experience perspectives from a multitude of cultures, NOT just their own
- Quoted from Ch. 3 of Writing Instruction in the Culturally-Relevant Classroom (p.16-17): Ladson-Billings' Practical Approach to Teaching Literacy:
- "Literacy instruction should validate students' cultures by casting all texts initially from their cultural frame of reference"
- Aka. Texts should support/affirm all cultural identities
- "Literacy instruction should deal explicitly with race and culture"
- Aka. Texts should invite students to explore and talk about race
- "Literacy instructions should include Standard English to speak and teach, but also invite other forms as well"
- Aka. Remember the chapter on 'codeswitching'? Standard English should be mandated in formal writings, but different community languages and dialects (including slang/Ebonics/hillbonics) shouldn't be discredited
Principle 2.3: Writers compose using different modes and technologies.
- There should be a variety of writing opportunities! Don't be afraid to branch out from the traditional 'book report', in other words.
- Examples of writing opportunities: spoken word poetry, songs/raps, 55-word or two-sentence short stories, haikus, digital blogging, etc.
Principle 2.4: Writers compose inside and outside the classroom.
- There should be thinking and creativity encouraged inside and outside of class- learning takes place in and out of the classroom.
Principles 3.1 through 3.4: How do writers self-reflect and improve?
Principle 3.1: Writers grow within a context/culture/community of feedback.
- Quoted from NCTE website: "To emerge as better writers from a writing experience, learns need feedback, and this feedback should fuel revision".
- This includes teacher feedback, peer revision, and self-revision. There's always ways to improve. What are some ways that the student can improve?
Principle 3.2: Writers grow when they broaden their repertoire, and when they refine their judgement in making choices with their repertoire.
- Encourage reading/writing content outside of the students' familiarity and comfort zone. This goes into providing a multitude of cultural perspectives and writing exercises.
Principle 3.3: Assessment should be transparent and contextual, and it should provide opportunities for writers to take risks and grow.
- In other words, make sure that the feedback that you provide for your students is straight to-the-point, implores critical thinking, and asks questions that the students can reflect on and answer within their writing.
Principle 3.4: Writers grow when they have a range of writing experiences and in-depth writing experiences.
*Author's note: Sorry if this was a long read, but I took a lot away from this week and I wanted to include everything I could in this blog post.
Bonus- a quote that resonated with me while writing this blog:
*When he says "getting the music out of the way", I think he means that he's getting the catchy beats and mindless indulgence of words out of the way and getting children to analyze what the songs really mean, and getting them indulged in the poetical aspect of everything.
Sources
<-- Chapters 1 through 3 (quoted specifically from pages 16-17 and Ch. 3)
Below I've included a link to the NCTE's website where this information can be found:
Here is also a link to Prodigy's strategies for teaching curriculum with cultural relevancy. Plus, it includes examples to go along with their points! Check it out:
I like that you touched on sustaining cultural pedagogy. I think this topic is a very important one to discuss because it can literally change how educators create their curriculum and how they connect with their students. By including lessons that are culturally relevant to students, I think it will help both educators and students to have a deeper level of connection and help build their relationship between them. I really like what you included in principle 3.2 about encouraging reading/writing content outside of students' comfort zone because I think it can have a great impacts on students. It is so important to get out of our comfort zone because there's where growth takes place. Therefore, by encouraging students to do that, it will allows them to grow and become a better reader/writer. Thank you for sharing and including helpful links for us.
ReplyDeleteMang, I totally agree with what you said when you said that growth takes place when we get out of our comfort zone. We are going to be challenged several times consistently throughout our teaching careers, but it is necessary for us to learn and grow as teachers. Even where we are at now in our pre-student teaching, we have a lot of vulnerable moments both in the classroom with our classmates, AND in the classroom with our students during field. I also agree we should encourage our students to do the same and get out of their comfort zone so that they can grow as students and as their own person.
DeleteMang and Anna,
DeleteI couldn't agree more with you. I have had to step completely out of my comfort zone when I first started blocks. I was nervous that I wasn't going to give my students what they needed in our class sessions. I was scared that I would say the wrong things, mess up or whatever. I was scared I wouldn't have those bonds that I had with my teachers with my students. I was scared with seeing some behavior instances around the school if I would be able to handle it. Although I don't think I have totally mastered classroom management or teaching culturally relevantly, I do feel more confident in my teaching. I liked your point about going deep into these kinds of topics. Some might be tough topics to talk about, but it is happening around them and it's important that they know that their not alone and they can stand up for their rights. Great responses ladies!!!
The NCTE webside does look like an excellent resource; I'm glad you mentioned that they have resources for helping teachers curate lesson plans that are culturally relevant, because I wasn't aware of that! I agree that it will be crucial for us as teachers to provide our students with many types of writing opportunities. Having many options outside the traditional book report will be helpful for our students to grow and develop as writers. It will be good for them to have practice expressing their thoughts/creativity in different ways over the school year, such as in poetry (haiku, song, rap, spoken word poetry). It'll also be necessary for us to provide our students with direct guidance in how to improve their writing.
ReplyDeleteI remember being intimidated by my honors English teacher my sophomore year of high school. She really cracked down on all her students' writing, and on top of that had a sarcastic personality most of the time. For the first half of the year or so, my papers were torn apart, but I didn't realize at the time that her critiques were truly improving my writing. I was so happy that she let me know that my writing had improved over the year. We should give that same level of critique, advice, and praise at the end of the year for our students. They'll thank us for making them better writers later in life; at least, I know I'm grateful to that teacher.
Morgan-
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for your post. I appreciate the helpful links. The principles are laid out in a nice user friendly way. I am going to print out this blog because I like the way the principles are laid out. I love that you pointed out that the NCTE website gives tips and tricks on how to create a culturally sustaining lesson plan.
When I get a classroom of my own, I plan on integrating these types of lessons into their learning. I think that I would love to integrate different types of writing. I actually was thinking that my small group could integrate writing of songs, lyrics, and poems and then integrate them into a tik-tok style video. I am unsure of how this would work with the restrictions we face as student teachers but I would love to do something like this with my future kiddos!
Melissa,
DeleteI love you idea to integrate Tik-Tok videos. I never thought about this in a classroom setting but it is so popular among young kids that it would be fun, yet a great way of learning. I had teachers try to integrate stuff like this into lessons that meant nothing to me, so I hated every minute of it. But we have done so much talking about cultural relevance that I think we all have a way of creating an interesting lesson that only gets better with things like Tik-Tok.
Melissa,
DeleteYes that is such a great idea. I feel that as teachers we do have stay up to the trends that our students are following. Like fortnight or like you said tik tok. WE need to make it engaging for them, have fun while learning as well. If it is something that they will enjoy then we should incorporate into our lessons. I love that we have been putting memes in our blog post. They make me so happy and I feel that their also something that are big in kids lives especially with the high presence of social media in our students lives. As, someone who probably spends way too much time on social media I can understand. Just using these things in our lessons will make them more engaging and make sure were are making our lessons relevant to the student. Great response Melissa!!!!
Melissa, I just wanted to pop in and tell you how awesome this idea you have of integrating TikTok into your lessons. When I sub, almost anytime a student brings up this app to me, so we know its an important part to their lives. I remember in high school we did something like this and the Vine app and I remember every part of the lesson and what we learned from it.
DeleteI think as teachers, it is important for us to keep up with the pop culture going on around our student's lives. Adding things like Bitmojis, instagram, and snapchat filters to our classroom can boost up engagement really quick! Our students today thrive off technology and I feel like the best thing to do is integrate it when we can and make learning relevant and fun!
Morgan,
ReplyDeleteI loved your post, it was so well written! Plus having all of those links will really help me now and in the future. I think writing is so important. I wish I was taught better ways to express myself through writing, because now when I journal i struggle really getting my feelings onto paper. I really liked when you talked about looking at different cultures and different perspectives. I think it is important to see from different points of view. For example last semester we read about Columbus from the journals they had, not the US perspective in a history book. This allowed us to think critically about what is actually true. We even took different positions when putting Columbus on trial. This was one of the most meaningful activities we have done this whole year. Students who are white especially need to see things from a different perspective to really grasp the idea that our country is not as free as we grew up thinking. That has been the biggest battle for me because I have not been around anything like this until these last two semesters. If we start when children are young we have the potential to make a very large impact on them and the community.
Kyrsten , I agree that is had been a struggle to learn how to be culturally relavent when we have been raised into adulthood because ignorant to these lessons. It’s scary yet exciting that we have so much impact on young lives to help them make a difference earlier in their lives
DeleteKyrsten,
DeleteI completely agree with you! I think using writing as a lens to look at different cultures and perspectives can be extremely beneficial. As you stated, this isn't something often done in school and I think if we all started with younger grades exposing this type of material, we could possibly change the world. I can understand why some have difficulty expressing themselves using writing which is why I think making it culturally sustaining can create a life long love for writing. Growing up my teachers had us write in journals throughout the years. Occasionally she gave us prompts and other times we could write whatever we wanted. I spent my time writing about my friends or family and what we had planned for the upcoming weekend. I loved writing at this point and it was something that carried with me forever. Even today I look back on these journals and smile because it's my thoughts from a time when I was younger and I can see how much I've grown.
Morgan , is blog post is extremely helpful! I find that even know before I am a full time teacher I have struggled with how to sustain a culturally relevant lesson with our field buddies. Having these useful links writing in particular can be difficult to teach of children all come from different backgrounds were they may hear different languages or uses of words. I agree that there is an aspect of encouragement that we need to have for children in order for them to be successful. All of these links are laid out beautifully and I look forward to putting them to good use. Thank you
ReplyDeleteMorgan, what a perfectly orchestrated blog post about our reading. This resource is so helpful for us both now, AND when we become teachers in the near future. It is important for us to be exposed to these early on. I appreciate you taking the time to put each of these principles more simply. This will be a great resource to come back to look at when we are curating curriculum of our own, even now with our student teaching!
ReplyDeleteI thought implementing the quote by Russell Simmons was very creative of you. I think that goes to show that anything can be poetry/literature. We just need to look past what our society calls "traditional literature" and incorporate what is actually interesting to our students. That would be way more beneficial to both us and our students when the interest level is high, and ultimately making the engagement level high as well. Overall, great post!
Anna,
DeleteI agree with everything you said as well, but I wanted to talk about the quote with Russell Simmons as well because I really appreciated it too. I think it was not only nice of you, Morgan, to add that in there because it fit your topic but also because it ties in a rapper that looks at music as poetry, which is what the article talks about on page 2 (NCTE,2018, pg 2), but also it gives the opportunity to incorporate hip hop music in to writing as well. A black, male, well known hip hop artist would be a great way to culturally connect the students to their writing and show how it doesn't have to be an essay or a paper to be a form of writing. Not to dig too deep in to it, but just some food for thought.
First of all I wanted to say I loved your post and the helpful links you provided! Writing has always been my favorite way to express myself and one of my favorite assignments throughout my school years. Writing lets you put whatever you're thinking or whatever message you want to get across, on paper. Like you said in the article, I think it's crucial to let our students know there's multiple uses for writing (i.e. songs, letters, text messages, etc). I think letting student's know that writing is important in their lives in many ways and if you can give them the opportunity to be free in their writing and create culturally sustaining writing, they'll not only learn more about themselves but also more about writing in the process. I also love the idea of incorporating music in writing- whether it be rap or any genre. I think exposing children to the meaning behind songs, when you take away the music and focus on the words and the meaning, can create an everlasting love for writing. All in all, I loved your post and I think this could be extremely useful in our future classrooms and I could see this specific subject as something I would be very interested in!
ReplyDeleteMayson, I agree that writing is a wonderful way to express yourself. Often people have difficulty expressing themselves in speech so having an alternate source such as writing, singing, or rapping (even though I don't like rap ;) to express themselves is a blessing. Even with these outlets people could be misunderstood but it is important to ask questions anytime we do not understand the point someone is trying to get across or if we see things differently. Seeing differently is fine and many people need to learn how to accept information that is difficult to take or agree to disagree giving everyone room to grow in thinking. Great response!
DeleteMorgan,
ReplyDeletethe links you posted on your blog posts are super helpful and great tools for all of us in the very near future when we start to teach and even when we plan our lesson plans for field. Writing is literally a form of expression and it is so crucial for our students to learn that at a young age. Writing shouldn't just be boring, and honestly I tell people this all of the time but reading and writing have always been my least favorite things to do! A lot of it stems from school though. Having these tools pushes us to be more culturally relevant but also sustaining with our students in the future and even today. Overall the layout of this post and the helpfulness of it is greatly appreciated.
Secilia,
DeleteIt sucks because I know for me, my literacy classes were based on paper after paper, however, there are so many different things that you can do with literacy. This is one reason I hated literacy growing up. That and I was a bad speller, I still am but that is besides the point. Reading through the culturally relevant principles really helped me in order to broaden my abilities to reach ALL students and make sure I am not that teacher that made me dislike literacy. I think Principle number 2.3,
"Principle 2.3: Writers compose using different modes and technologies.
There should be a variety of writing opportunities!
Examples of writing opportunities: spoken word poetry, songs/raps, 55-word or two-sentence short stories, haikus, digital blogging, etc."
really made me see that there are so many different opportunities that you can choose to use when teaching literacy.
Morgan,
ReplyDeleteWow! Great post! I liked when you talked about teacher feedback and peer revision. These are important things we have learned while in blocks. Our teachers are experts in their fields, they have been in our shoes before learning about all the strategies that our students will use. How to deal with difficult students. They are there as a tool for us. They want us to succeed so they give us feedback to make us better teachers. We are still learning, they are there to help us learn almost everything that we will need in our future classroom. I feel that getting feedback from our teachers, as well as our peers, not only helps us but them as well. We as future educators are going to have to give feedback to our students so we are going to be able to take feedback from our teachers, no matter how harsh it may be. When we were doing our narratives in class I often felt that the teacher was asking to much of me, by asking to tell more about the story. But she was just giving me feedback to help my narrative. I had to step out of my comfort zone and tell a story that was a little hard for me, but my peers and Dr. Taylor gave me the courage to be able to do that. Amazing post great job!
Amber,
DeleteI agree with being more involved in the writing of our future students. I believe that incorporating their own lives with the readings is a very good tool. For our group lesson plan, we are using a book that will show them that life is hard sometimes. That sometimes we have to leave people or things behind when we did not want to. Our plan is to give them the image and let them express their thought or relevance to the issues. Like you said I believe teacher feedback is very important. I think when I was young that I was doing something wrong all the time. I hate to ask the teacher and sound dumb. I think if more teachers did the feedback we or at least I would not be in those types of situations like students have been before. I also like the narrative assignment and I will definitely use that in my class. Because, it ties in some much emotions with each other.
Morgan
ReplyDeleteThis was honestly a great blog post! You did a great job at really analyzing everything that was listed in the article and I like that you even elaborated on each principle a little rather than just listing them all out. Just to kind of share one of my favorite parts of the article, I really liked the feedback principle (Principle 3.1) where it talks about how students need feedback to be a better writer. I like what you said in your blog about it being clean, cut, and precise, and it should let the writer know what they could do to make it better. There is a line on page 6 that I highlighted that states "students also need practice in explaining why they made the choices they made" (NCTE,2018,pg 6). I highlighted this because I felt it was important to note that feedback is not just a matter of "here's what you did wrong, next". It is important to understand why they chose to write about this or that and in this or that way, along with what they will write as well. Anyways, great post!
Ms. Best,
DeleteI wanted to elaborated on the quote you used, "Students also need practice in explaining why they made the choices they made(NCTE 2018, Pg6)." This helps students feel that they in fact matter as well as their voices. This also allows them to develop a voice. What I mean by "develop a voice" is developing their voice in this world and having confidence in what they create or what they find meaningful. Which ties in to the importance of students realizing they can be activist and can fight for what they believe in.
Merannda & Olivia,
DeleteI really like what you both have to say regarding giving feedback. I agree that feedback is so important for students to continue to grow. Not only as a student, but person as well. I think you both are exactly right when saying that it is not always about what you did wrong, but helping them in strengthening their work. Olivia I really like what you said about developing their voice. I think that is also very important for their growth!
Morgan, thank you for sharing your thoughts on this weeks reading and please do not feel the need to apologize for your post's length. I really appreciated how you went above to share your own thoughts about the principles. There are a couple principles that stood out to me especially. Principle 1.2: Writing serves a variety of purposes and Principle 2.2: Writers bring multiliteracies, and they bring cultural and linguistic assets to whatever they do. First, Principle 1.2, made me think about how people write but above that how they speak. I realize when we speak or share our thoughts sometimes what we present comes across in a manner that was not intended and sometimes our words or written words are not understood the way we would like them to be. Principle 2.2, addresses multiliteracies bringing cultural and linguistic assets to whatever they do. I believe often times people write/read a text and instead of hearing what is said the first sign of disagreeing causes an individual to stop listening/reading. It is important to understand or at least know perspectives of different cultures are shared differently and that is fine. If we could learn to hear each other and accept other's thinking we would come together with ease knowing there is a reason we are not all the same. Knowing we can learn and grow from each other and still have our own values. Finally knowing what we share in word or written is not to attack others but to simply inform what one may not know. Thanks for your post!!
ReplyDeleteMorgan, thank you for taking the time to write these principles out for us in a user friendly way! Seeing them in your blog with the little explanation really helped me understand these more. I really like that you included the prodigy link in here with these resources. Prodigy is an amazing website that children love to use and having these tips with it makes it even better!
ReplyDeleteI love principle 2.3 about branching out to different writing methods. Sometimes we can get so busy and wrapped up in the standards that we can forget there are other ways of expressing our writing. I want to make it a goal in my classroom for my students to be able to express themselves in their writing.
These principles are something that we should have memorized or hung up by our desk because there is value in all of these for writing lessons.
Thank you, Morgan!
Hannah,
DeleteI really appreciate how you brought up the different forms of writing in principle 2.3, because too often children's intelligence gets labeled on the basis of their formal writing. As crucial as it is to develop formal writing skills with young students, many students communicate and express their literacy in many different ways. This reminds me of the section of Bomer & Bomer, when multiple ways of reading and interpreting the world was discussed. People have different ways of reading the world around them, and formal written word is lifted up to be higher than other forms quite often. Developing a caring classroom environments and keeping an awareness/appreciation of different ways of reading the word and expressing themselves can allow our students to fully engage in the classroom and create opportunities for lasting learning.
Hey Kristen and Hannah! I totally agree with both of you! Growing up, I was the type of girl who identified and learn best based on a set of 'rules' that was given to me. This means that my best set of writing was the book report, but if you asked me why we have those 'rules' I could never answer. So was I actually learning literacy? Probably not. When assigning these different reading, we need to remember the main goal of teaching culturally relevant literacy. As said above, "to compose content that reflects off of the child's own personal values and takeaways, and blends into knowledge learned at school." by writing these rules based paper, was I doing this. Once again probably not.
DeleteMorgan,
ReplyDeleteYour post really dived into the Principles in a deeper way, while also connecting them to the course readings, which I really appreciated. I reflected over the critical section of providing student feedback, as that is a relevant topic we have been discussing across our courses the last couple of weeks. In regards to 3.1 and 3.3, there was a lot of discussion around peer feedback, clear feedback, and how they can improve. This reminded me of our class discussion that we had over providing critical, but positive feedback. The way that we frame our feedback to our students is very important. Addressing our students from a deficit perspective can do damage to our students as learners and have negative impacts on the relationships we wish to build with them. I like hw you dissected the principle to be in "forms that students can answer in their writing", which ties back to having those probing verbal questions we have been engaging in math, reading, science, and observational field. Something I'm passionate about is building our students up by providing verbal and written forms of what they have done or do well. Even in college, I get excited about small comments on assignments and feedback from my teachers that build up what I am doing well, but they also do a good job of tying in something I could continue to work on or expand on. I've seen students reactions when they receive positive feedback, and it makes them more excited to engage in sessions with me!
Thank you for being so detailed in your post. The length was necessary, as teaching and education is critical! :) Great job!
Ms. McDaniel,
DeleteI wanted to comment on the your following statement," addressing our students from a deficit perspective can do damage to our students as learners and have negative impacts on the relationships we wish to build with them(McDaniel 2019)." The way you make a student feel about a subject can have a lasting effect on that child. They will internalize negative feedback and start to feel as though they're not good enough. Positive feedback like you, McDaniel elaborated on allows students to reflect on what they did and how they can grow.
I wanted to quote a chapter from These Students are Out of Control (Milner 2018) where it elaborates on the benefits of allowing students to reflect because then they'll develop a growth mindset and think of advice and criticism as a good thing because they know they will grow from it. Like Mrs. Cosby said, "Learning is a life-long Journey(Gayle Cosby 2018)."
Morgan,
ReplyDeleteGreat post! I found all of this information extremely helpful, and I hope we can continue to have access to these blogs when we become teachers. I think it would come in very handy! My favorite principal is, "Principle 2.1: Everyone is a writer.". I think it is important to let students know that this is the case. Everybody is a writer, everyone will have different styles, and different strengths and weakness, everyone will have certain things they enjoy writing about, but everyone is a writer. That is why making the content culturally sustaining is so important, because content students relate to will help them bring out the writer inside. Funny how everything comes full circle back to making the pedagogy culturally sustaining!
I agree, this resource is very helpful and I will most likely use it in my classroom. I believe in your statement about how we should let our students know they are good writers. We should educate our students on how to be a good writer that they can be. I believe every student can write in their own style and this way it helps students learn more from their peers. As teachers, we should embrace the differences of our students and give them them a safe environment to share their thoughts and beliefs with their writing projects. Our writing curriculum should be culturally relevant, as you said, as it will help them become writers.
DeleteMorgan did include a lot of very helpful information that I hope to keep in mind when I become a teacher as well! I am responding to your post because that principle really resonated with me too. As I mentioned in my own post, I had developed a really strong and confident view of myself as a writer until it got torn down from one teacher in high school. I never want to do that to my students. Like you said, everyone will have different styles, strengths/weaknesses, and certain things they enjoy writing about. That doesn't mean one child's writing should be valued over another. I think it will be important for us to look at our students on an individual level in terms of assessing what is important to them and what they took away from the writing experience.
DeleteMorgan,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed our post a lot. It had lots of information to both help our-self and our students. From the website, I liked how it was labeled as questions. When I read a question, I think about it more for some reason. Because, I can read a title that says "Reading is good for students" because it is and that is that. But, a title saying "Are these books best for students?" makes me think more about everything. From the question I think about why do they think that and let me investigate if it is true then. A passage from "Understanding and Teaching Writing: Guiding Principles" that I love says, "As teachers of writers, our goal is for writers to emerge as better writers with each new writing experience" (2018). Because, the new experience makes life better when they are engaged with the learning.
Christopher,
DeleteI absolutely agree that by allowing students multiple pathways to engage in writing, they will ultimately grow. These experiences are valuable to students because it allows them to explore who they are as both writers and students who bring funds of knowledge into the classroom. I think even just encouraging students to engage in writing when it comes to exploring their feelings and stance on certain subjects is valuable and very beneficial to emerging and experienced writers.
Morgan,
ReplyDeleteI appreciate the time you took to reflect and provide an outline of the National Council of Teachers of English "Understanding and Teaching Writing: Guiding Principles". I felt that this piece was resourceful because it helped to organize our findings throughout this semester. I wanted to touch on the fact that when we teach writing, it is our responsibility to work to connect it to our students' lives. According to the NCTE, "Because writing is linked to identity, writers represent different ideologies, values and identities" (NCTE, 2018, p. 3). We should platform writing in the classroom as not only an opportunitiy to leverage our students' identities, but allow them the opportunities to learn about and respect identities that differ from their own.
Good job Morgan,
ReplyDeleteI thought your blog was well-organized and informative. It convinced me to use this text to help my students build their writing skills while being culturally responsive. I find it helpful to have a resource that outlines what we should accomplish in our classrooms. As future educators, we should not follow "the act of creating composed knowledge" when we educate our students. Students need to learn from content, as you said, that reflect their personal values and takeaways. They will become better writers if they are allowed to write about their personal background and cultures. We need to give our students that freedom to write about what is familiar and comfortable to them. We should restrict them to write about topics that does not reflect the students' previous knowledge on the world. As this resource mentions, teachers should give students the opportunities to write different types of writing. We should convince our students they are writers and develop their writing abilities. As future, we should build our whole curriculum based on being culturally relevant and incorporate culturally relevant assignments.
Morgan,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing! The NCTE website is definitely something I need to keep in mind when I enter the classroom with all of its tips and tricks on how to create a culturally sustaining lesson plan. My favorite part of your blog post was when you said the "ultimate goal of culturally relevant writing: to compose content that reflects off of the child's own personal values and takeaways, and blends into knowledge learned at school." This really resonated with me and my experiences a student. I had a love for writing that was taken away my junior year of high school when I felt like nothing I wrote was good enough for my teacher. I had always felt proud of my writing-- it was something I actually felt good at! However, I always felt that she tore me down and didn't value what I felt was important. My excitement for writing turned into a fear that every assignment I turned in was just going to be one more hit to my grade. I never want to make my students feel that way. Reading your post made me reflect on this experience, and I am thankful for that in hopes it will serve as a reminder that I must avoid instilling this negative mindset around writing in my own future students. At the end of the day, the "aha moments" and major takeaways are what will stick in the minds of your students, and that is what we need to value! Thank you Morgan!