I think one thing that students often overlook or don’t pay much attention to is the fact that writing is a process. Writing is more than cramming in a standard five paragraph essay the night before its due. It’s more than simply using a thesaurus, and making a rough draft. Real writing requires thought, your brain is going to be put to work, you are going to get absorbed into what you are doing, and its going to be well worth it, even if you don’t see that at the time.
As we have read throughout both Christensen and Jago, the importance of revision and giving students ample opportunities to write authentically is essential. I am someone that manges to have a bipolar relationship with creating multiple drafts for papers. I love that when you compile a first draft for class you are generating ideas and the pressure isn’t so high. I enjoy peer revision and the comments I receive from my peers, and so on and so forth. However, I am also lazy and don’t always feel motivated to put a lot of effort into a draft, or if I receive a lot of positive feedback on what I have written I don’t go above and beyond to polish it. I figure somewhere in there is a happy medium, like I said it’s a bipolar relationship currently.
Creating drafts is just one way for students to have a low stakes writing approach. Jago says it well when she states, “How can we expect students to perform well on a high stakes writing assignment without giving them multiple opportunities to practice on low-stakes tasks?” (Page 86) Likewise our students need that daily writing, those daily exercises, journaling, that is not so structured that it will give them headaches just thinking about it. Students need ways to practice expressing themselves, and their feelings without being concerned over grammar or the perfect sentence.
One of the exercises that Jago uses is one where she has her student’s journal for ten minutes before a specific novel is discussed. She asks them to relate their personal experiences or thoughts on a subject which relates to that literature, as an introduction for the lesson. We did similar assignments in high school and we took them seriously because we had to create a binder with all of our journaling together, and turn it in at the end of the semester as a collection. I think this is great for starting each class with writing, and also connecting the literature with writing. Keeping students active in class with their writing, will make it easier to stay in the habit of writing on a daily basis in my experience.
As for me... I love journaling & plan on using it in my classroom :)
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