Emdin, Gallagher, & Christensen

   For this week's readings, we took a look at Emdin talking of coteaching, Gallagher speaking about students creating personal writing, and Christensen diving into writing for justice. All pieces of writing had great amounts of information in it. All three provided insight into how students think and feel about writing. A main theme I found throughout was that students care much more about what they're writing about if it is personal to them.

   I enjoyed the Emdin reading Coteaching because it provided some valuable information about how students react to lessons. If a student feels that a lesson is not relatable to their lives, then chances are they will be tuning out halfway through a lecture. But if the examples given can give students ideas of the real world or something that they have seen before, they are much more likely to pay attention. This is seen through an example Emdin gives as a teacher first gives an example on friction using marbles on a table. While we have all seen marbles before it isn't the most interesting example. When he assigns two of his students to give an example on friction, they use the much more relevant example of subway trains stopping and the effect it has on the people inside of the train. This sparks much more conversation between students. Emdin sees coteaching as an effective way of allowing students to learn from each other.

   I enjoy reading from Teaching Adolescent Writers by Kelly Gallagher. Gallagher speaks from years of experience and gives helpful pointers on how to properly teach students how to write. In this chapter, Gallagher focuses on "fake writing" and how to avoid it. His best advice is to have students find something they are passionate about. This will allow for much more interesting essays. He also suggests that narrowing down an idea to a specific point will create a more concise, easier to read essay. I believe that having a student find something they enjoy to write about will make them much better writers. It will also allow for a more interesting essay to read over. Of course, other writing such as analyzing Shakespeare will have to be thrown into a curriculum. But with the addition of having students write something they are passionate about will be much more enjoyable to them.

   Christensen brings up other great points about teaching writing to high school students. Some ideas were similar to Gallagher's, as she points to having students write about something that is near and dear to them. Throughout the chapter we can see the essays written are from personal experiences. Essays such as these interest the reader much more than what Gallagher refers to as "fake writing." Christensen also mentions the strategy of the read-around, where you share your writing out loud with other students in class. This is what we did last week with our writing history papers. This is an effective way of allowing the writer to see what they should add, remove, or work on.

   All authors gave me ideas on how to get students to appreciate writing, and that I should have them write on personal experiences or things that they enjoy.