Writing

Since almost the beginning of time, people have been writing in some shape or form. This has led to writing becomming a social and cultural practice, differing slightly from culture to culture. Writing has broadly been used to describe and record events, important details and ideas.

Just as approaches to writing have changed across different cultures, approaches to writing have changed in the classroom. Approaches have varied greatly over the past 100 years, fluctuating from precise, explicit and instructional to creative and free form styles and back again.
Current approaches use a balanced teaching method with a focus on both explicitly teaching writing skills, while encouraging and supporting creativity and imagination (Campbell and Green, 2006).

Teachers of writing are involved in helping students decide what to write about, how to present their writing and how to craft and style their writing in an appropriate manner for their audiences.
This approach ensures that writing is both purposeful and creative; good writing requires a solid grasp on both. When students have a solid understanding of the craft of writing (style, structure, particulars of genre and form) they are more able to express their creativity and imagination in a mature and sophisticated manner. Students must learn the skills of writing first, then link these skills to pratical application. When a writer has control over a particular writing style, then creativity, originality and imagination are more enhanced (Campbell and Green, 2006).

Image from: http://edu.warhol.org/ulp_hlands.html.
The folders in the middle of the table suggest that these students may be working on writing portfolios.

What about reading and writing? Reading and writing together are wonderful skills that help enhance the skills of each other. Simply reading and talking about literature and writing does not ensure that students absorb good writing practice. They need to be taught hand in hand. For example, as a whole class, students may read a new text type that they have not encountered before, say, persuasive writing. Under guidance from their teacher, students read and discuss different types of persuasive writing. Once students have a handle on the important elements of persuasive writing, they can begin to experiment with the new style. With a strong understanding of the expectations of persuasive writing, students can unleash their creativity and imagination, imagine the possibilities: 10 reasons dinosaurs should be cloned and brought back to life, why life on Mars would be amazing...
Teaching students the particulars about a certain style of writing, sets them up for success. Once they understand how and why a style is used, they can apply it in any way they like, knowing that they will always receive good marks for appropriate use of the style.

As with most areas of the curriculum, a student's back ground must be taken into consideration. As mentioned above, different cultures have different views and uses for writing. Some value writing as an important way of recording events, while other cultures have a more oral way of passing on important information. When teaching writing to students, this needs to be taken into consideration. A student's culture must be aucknowledged, respected and most importantly, involved. If a student has an oral based culture, then approach writing in a way that would be meaningful and interesting to the student.

Image from: http://seanbanville.com/2010/04/27/paired-and-group-writing-activity/

While writing is a main area of English, it has many applications across several KLAs that are often forgotten. Writing is not only a tool for expressing creativity and imagination! It can be used to record and consolidate unerstandings, assist a student to work through a problem step by step, help them confirm what they actually know and can be a valuable tool for assessment for both students and teachers.
Writing activities such as RAFT (Role, Audience, Format, Topic) can be used for any subject area. Using RAFT is a quick activity for students to record and present their knowledge on a particular topic (Fisher and Frey, 2008).
Fisher and Frey (2008) in chapter 9 'Powerful Pens: Writing to Learn with adolescents' provide a number of quick and easy writing tasks that can be used across all subject areas for students to display their learning. These include activities like yesterday's news, exit slips, cinquains, admit slips and crystal balls. Some of these activities require specific instruction on their form, others are simply a way for students to write down everything they know or do not know. These activities really confirm that writing is not just for English, that writing can be used across any subject area as a tool to reflect, awaken, confirm and consilidate learning and as a useful and inportant assessment tool for both teachers and students.

Overall writing should be used in a purposeful or necessary manner (even if the purpose is just to be creative or to have fun with words; just be sure that students understand why). Writing should encourage students to explore, take risks, awaken joy, creativity and imagination.

Image from: http://2kmand2kj.global2.vic.edu.au/websites-for-kids/

And, as always, a classroom that is safe and supportive, one that fosters writing, words and a range of genres and styles is a classroom in which children will take risks and explore, further enhancing their learning and understanding.