Post 201: How do students develop as writers?

Post 201: How do students develop as writers?

Many of the same tips I had for teaching writing online applies to teaching writing face to face and vice versa.

1. Create trusting bond with teacher.

2. Teacher gets to know her students. In an online environment, the teacher gets to know her students through constant feedback back and forth, constant email with students, asking students what they need from the class, and engaging with students in the forums.

3. Group work--The teacher and the student collaborate together to improve student writing.  Students online or face to face can peer edit each other's papers. In a face to face, students can grade each other's paper and explain to each other their mistakes to reinforce essay structure and grammar rules learned in class. Have an older student paired with a younger student and have the older student help edit the younger student's papers.

4. In both online and face to face, use the Writing Process approach by teaching students how to think aloud while writing. It turns out the steps of the Writing Process--Pre-Write (Brainstorming, finding a topic, developing a thesis, literature review, outline--gels with the same cognitive skills of planning a paper) then the Writing phase of the Writing Process gels with cognitive skills of Executing that Plan and  Re-write gels with Seeing how it all turned out cognitive skill.

5. Social Turn--Involve the student's background, interest, hobbies, cultural background into class curriculum.

6. Teach rhetorical structures like Definition Essay, Comparison Contrast Essay and the 5 paragraph essay structure and grammar rules through a student centered classroom.

7. The Writing teacher is the guide by the side, not the sage on the sage in a Writing Process classroom.