SP19:Methods of Teaching ReadingI:24405

Creating Spaces for Black Adolescent Girls to “Write It Out!” What is this? There was a 5-week writing institute course created specifically for black adolescent girls ranging from ages 11-17. The institute took 16 participants based on their unique perspectives of growing up as black young females within society. This idea of these literacy writing groups is based all the way back to the 1800s. They were made to improve and advance literacy development through individuals who differ in identities’, experiences, and literary abilities. This 5-week writing institute’s goals was to give these girls a voice and allow them the ability to find their own self-identity. A wider goal in which the institute aimed to achieve was to benefit and shift the conditions of our society.  What happened during the Course?   One of the girls, Iris, was focused on greatly during the course. Before the course, she wrote the following: “I have so many issues with it [identity] an...

  Let's Talk about Writing! When I think about my writing experiences up to blocks, I think about writing research papers, responses to questions I don't care to answer, and writing whatever will make my English teacher happy. That's all writing was for us in the eyes of the teachers I had. Nothing about it was social or political. We never kept writing journals or observed the world around us with a critical eye. From conversations we have had in class, I feel like most us experienced similar things regarding writing.  That's where us as future teachers come in! We get to make a shift in writing!  The first step we can make is giving each our of students a writers notebook. And encouraging use out of them. Encourage them to write about issues they see and critically think about it. Encourage them to take it home with them and write what they see at the park on the weekends. Encourage them to take it to lunch and recess. But, how can we motivate our ...

On page 123-127 in For a Better World: Reading and Writing for Social Action, the author discusses a writing project where students were encouraged to identify an issue they cared about. They were allowed to utilize any form of writing they thought was appropriate for the project and purpose they chose. Examples could include petitions, letters, posters, pamphlets, poems, or any other form of writing. Students were told to decide whether they wanted their goal to be to spread awareness about a certain issue, or wanted a specific action to be taken regarding the issue (Bomer, R., & Bomer, K, 2001). I don’t remember doing any projects similar to this throughout elementary, middle, and high school. I’m wishing we had been assigned a project like this, because all our assignments were always structured, and we weren’t often left to explore our own values as far as activism, or brainstorm ideas on how to apply writing in cases where we want social change to occur. I think many o...