The Importance of Writing

In my current Kindergarden observation room, my cooperating teacher reinforces the importance of writing on a daily basis. These five and six-year-old children, though they struggle with handwriting and spelling, are being exposed to the communication process which writing involves at a very early age. Because of this exposure, they learn and discover multiple ways to express themselves through words and in doing so learn more about content and concepts encountered.

Writing is a powerful tool that can be considered a "catalyst for further learning and meaning making." When writing is considered an important part of one's education rather than a tool for testing, students can stimulate parts of the brain with more intensity, and in doing so, develop more effective ways to communicate throughout their lives. Writing and reading are often seen as two areas of study that go hand-in-hand because together they help students to think critically about information. Because of this, however, writing can sometimes be lacking in a classroom's content if the teacher puts significant emphasis on reading. Teachers must reinforce writing in the classroom because it encourages confidence in student ability to convey, explain, and support ideas, not only in academics but also in everyday life communication.

There are various styles and methods to writing. Prompting students for an on-demand response actually inhibits their writing ability because they are limited to a narrow scope of response. Authentic writing, on the other hand, often forces the students to think more creatively while completing a more broad assignment task. Authentic writers may create things like blogs, wikis, podcast, brochures, speeches, etc that engage the writer in a more in-depth thought process of what they are producing on the page. In addition to these types of writing, there are also many methods that teachers many use to properly introduce writing into the classroom. Through a series of stages, teachers can provide prewriting, writing, rewriting, and post-writing techniques that keep students engaged and invested in their work. Assignments that require lengthier products or more comprehensive skills would benefit from these staged strategies to provide the students with opportunities for skill progression.

The PAR framework is very conducive for a heavy influence of writing across content areas. Preparation, assistance and reflective tools are often enhanced by writing either notes or products that the teacher can also use as formative assessment throughout lessons. In my kindergarden class, students are invited to write throughout the day as either note-taking guides or reinforced practice to grow in their understanding of content. These strategies are very powerful tools and must be upheld by teachers if we are to produce fully proficient writers in and outside of the classroom.

Reading Beyond Traditional Textbooks

Preparing students to read in the 21st century cannot be based solely on course textbooks. The young minds entering our classrooms today have been raised in an age of information that values communication, speed, and technology. Many of the children in this Digital Age will come into a school setting with more technological savviness than some of their teachers, and we must be prepared to cater to this learning style.

Textbooks are frequently used tools by many teachers and still act as helpful references in learning; however, research supports that students are more motivated in classrooms when they have opportunities to work with manipulatives or to engage in multimodal platforms. Overuse of a textbook nowadays is seen as a limitation in a student's learning; though the strength of a textbook is its source of information, the undeniable weakness is its inability to provide the depth to pique a student's curiosity about new concepts. The days of reading a textbook chapter and answering questions at the end are outdated; teachers must be prepared to provide students with resource multiplicity in all content areas. Along with textbooks, resources such as trade books, magazines, newspapers, internet sources, websites, video clips, computer programs, etc must be used in classroom today to truly expand a students method for learning.

Teachers need plans of action for incorporating more diverse methods of literature, beyond the textbook, in lesson framework. Read-alongs and read-alouds are student and teacher based tools for stimulating attention and enhancing content understanding. When a teacher adapts their classroom for a particular type of learner, they are improving the classroom climate for learning. For example, a student may ask the teacher to read aloud a portion of the day's reading assignment to the class before independently reading themselves so they have a deeper understanding of the inflection or pronunciation of words. Teachers cannot abandon these practices in the class if it is beneficial to the students.

A teacher must be prepared to set the learning environment in a way that supports all facets of learning media. When providing bookshelves, teachers can include all types of folders, newspaper clippings, baskets of books, etc, that a student will browse as if in a bookstore. This provides a supported learning environment that includes much more than a wordy textbook, and effectively engages all types of students in literature content.