This class has reinforced many things that I already knew about writing. The need for explicit instruction in writing was reinforced throughout our class. Students need to be directly and explicitly instructed for them to be able to write.
Students benefit from specific feedback from teachers and peers. Students should be talking throughout the entire writing process. This helps to improve students writing.
We talked about different text structures and strategies for teaching these to students. During prewriting, we need to organize our ideas using a web or other organizer.
I liked that we learned that we should not focus and emphasize the final product that is produced rather we should focus on the process of how they got there. Often times we are so worried about that final product that we do not focus on or understand how to get to the product.
If I want to motivate my students the key to this is not just to give my students a random topic to talk and write about. For students to be motivated and engaged we need to incorporate what we are teaching or what they know into their writing. It is not ok to just give students an interesting topic to write about, this is not motivating.
