Abstract: Does spelling count? 'Are you going to take off points if I don't use transitions? Why am I being punished for not writing well? Do any of these questions sound familiar? For the past six years, I have been bombarded with similar queries from my students each time I assigned a written task. And like a seasoned politician, I avoided answering the question by posing one of my own: do you think? This was a convenient way to skirt an issue that had troubled me as well. As a social studies teacher, I considered the content part of the curriculum easy. The state-generated requirements were precise, down to the dates, individuals, and events that students should know before they leave at the end of the term. The skills, however, were the gray area--so broad and general that they were open to a variety of interpretations and to subjectivity. What does it mean for students to demonstrate effective writing strategies? What are effective writing strategies, and how much should they be worth in terms of grading? If a student has mastered the content, how much should I deduct from the grade for grammatical mistakes? Knowing that my own thinking on the subject was cloudy, I set out to learn more about the writing process and about how I could incorporate effective writing strategies into my classroom. First Stop: English Class My first stop was the English teacher on my academic team, whom I relied heavily on to show me the ropes in teaching writing. We decided to have a joint class writing assignment: I supplied the content during my class time while she focused on the writing process during her class time. This approach seemed to give us the best of both worlds. In my classroom, the students had forty-five minutes each day to focus on research and to determine the facts to be incorporated into their work. In the English teacher's classroom, the students had the same amount of time to focus on the mechanics, organization, and style of their papers. Although the end products were exemplary, the overall effort was a failure. I had not gained any new insights into the writing process. All I did was pass the buck to the English teacher when it came to writing instruction. My grading rubric placed no emphasis on writing because I thought that the grade the students received in English class was sufficient. I also did a disservice to my students. My actions suggested to my students that writing was not important in the social studies classroom. Targeted Writing Skills Although my first effort to improve my students' writing skills was unsuccessful, it forced me to go back to the drawing board and to reexamine my own teaching methods. My students provided me with a guide. I noticed that all of the papers that they turned in for English class had a notation in the upper left-hand corner with the letters TWS and three specific items listed next to the letters: clearly stated thesis, use of transitions, and correct use of punctuation. Not wanting to appear ignorant in front of my students, I asked the English teacher later what it all meant. She told me that the TWS stood for Targeted Writing Skills. These were specific objectives in a particular composition that she would evaluate. Instead of grading for everything, she picked three items for the students to focus on in their papers. In class, the teacher described each of the components and how to use them. TWS helped the students apply what they learned to their own writing. Once students mastered the skills, the teacher would replace them with three new ones. The students were still accountable for the already-mastered skills, but on subsequent papers they would add other sets of TWS to their knowledge base. The TWS concept was a revelation to me. I would not have to worry about trying to find every little mistake in my students' writing. Instead, I could focus on specific elements that they knew I would evaluate ahead of time. …
Publication Year: 2003
Publication Date: 2003-05-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 2
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