The big idea in this article is implementing the approach of writing to learn. In the article they discuss how writing can be implemented in a variety of ways and across a variety of subjects. Writing to learn is a way for the students to write down their personal thoughts which helps them foster better connections and enhances their comprehension skills. Writing to learn is all about the students connecting to their own experiences to enrich their understanding. It also forces the students to take ownership of their learning and fosters critical thinking across subject matter. Writing to learn is a part of a bigger curriculum referred to as writing across the curriculum, which is basically using writing as a way to learn in every subject. Writing to learn is all about taking a personal approach and making personal connections through writing. The main goal of writing to learn is making the students active learners instead of passive learners.
K-W-L charts can be very effective for implementing the strategy of writing to learn. It has the students write what they know about a certain subject matter, what the want to know, and finally what they learn. It can be done as a class, or even by the individuals. The K-W-L charts helps students activate prior knowledge while also making connections between what they know and what they learn. Another way writing to learn can be used is by having the students keep personal journals. The journals can be kept for any subject such as a reading journal, a math journal, or a social studies journal. For social studies, the students can write down their personal response to the different historical events they study. The journal allows them to personally reflect on the event and it helps the student keep track of their thinking. The article discusses many advantages of keeping journals for different subjects—one being that the student has a permanent record of their thinking which they can always go back and reflect on.
The writing to learn approach is already implemented into my 4th grade classroom. My students keep reading journals where they keep track of their thinking. In their journals they reflect upon what they’ve read while also keeping track of their predictions and inferences they make while they read. Although my students are keeping track of their thinking during reading, they do not have journals for other subject matter such as math, social studies, or science. Although I think it might not always be beneficial to keep a journal for math or science, I think social studies is a great place to have personal journals. After reading this article, it makes a lot of sense for students to personally reflect on different events they learn about, because it will help them make connections and think deeper about the subject matter. I definitely think that writing should be implementing across the curriculum, and not just during writer’s workshop. By having writing in a variety of subjects, students are practicing their writing skills while also learning new things.
In order to use this approach successfully, I think the use of a personal journal needs to be modeled. Although a journal is a place for a student to keep track of his or her own thinking, students will need to see it modeled so that they understand what good thinking looks like. Also, to successfully use this approach I would need to find out more research on exactly how often students should write in their personal journals. Should students be expected to write for math or social studies everyday? I think for a reading journal, writing should take place everyday, however, for other subjects it might make sense to only use the journals a couple times a week. It would helpful as a professional to talk to other teachers who have used this approach to see what worked best for them.
Although my unit is not focused around writing, there will be a lot of writing that takes place. For my unit, I am doing a read aloud while students are keeping track of their thinking in their reading journals. This article was very helpful since I plan on having my students keep track of connections they make, predictions, inferences, and just their thinking in general while I read aloud to them. I will need to consider how my students have been keeping track of their thinking and if it differs then their formal writing—which I know it does. When assessing them, I need to take this into consideration, because I’m not assessing them on the mechanics but rather their ability to think deeply about a text.
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