Genre

Out of all the readings this week the idea that interested me most was Routman's talk about genre. I was taught (as I am sure many of us were) about each genre in isolation, learning all the characteristics of the genre and writing to fit them. I really like how Routman in Ch. 8 talked about just teaching good writing and the different genres would happen more naturally. She also mentions that as teachers, we need to nurture students and give them what they need in terms of writing. If a student feels she needs to express herself with a poem, that would be a good moment to give her a mini-lesson about poems. In Writing Essentials, Routman said that, "The purpose for writing determines the genre or form the writing takes, not the other way around" (194). I completely agree! I have seen it done the other way around and seen kids struggle through an assignment just to get it done. They had no investment in the assignment whatsoever. I think the important point to take away here is that all we need to do is teach good writing and the rest will follow.

Grading Writing

In Elbow he mentioned that not every writing assignment has to be graded and Routman pointed out that like reading, becoming a good writer takes practice. I think these two ideas go hand-in-hand. Grading everything students ever write is not only time consuming for the teacher, but also sends a message to the students that they need approval.

I think that writing workshop (or something similar) is a great way to integrate writing time into the classroom. I feel that writing is usually done in spurts and are usually fairly substantial assignments. Writing every day is the only way that students will become better writers. This also means that students need to be free to write about whatever they want. That's not to say that there can still be assignments where students write about specific things (something has to be graded to show their progress!) Giving students that time every day just to write is necessary. It also means that teachers would have an overwhelmingly huge amount of grading to do, therefore, don't grade every piece of writing!