PERSPECTIVE IN WRITING Writing, though, should not be viewed as an activity that happens only within a
classroom''''s walls. Teachers need to
support students in the development of writing lives, habits, and preferences for life outside
school. We already know that many students do extensive amounts of self-sponsored writing: emailing, keeping journals or doing creative projects, instant messaging, making Web sites, blogging and so on. As much as possible, instruction should be geared toward making sense in a life outside of school, so that writing has ample room to grow in individuals'''' lives. It is useful for teachers to consider what elements of their curriculum they could imagine students self-sponsoring outside of school. Ultimately, those are the activities that will
produce more writing In order to provide quality opportunities for student writing, teachers must minimally understand How to interpret curriculum documents, including things that can be taught while students are actually writing, rather than one thing at a time to all students at once The elements of "writing lives" as people construct them in the world outside of school Social structures that support independent work How to confer with individual writers How to assess while students are writing How to plan what students need to know in response to ongoing
research How to create a sense of personal safety in the classroom, so that students are willing to write freely and at length. How to create community while students are writing in the same room together Often, when people think of writing, they think of texts -- finished pieces of writing. Understanding what writers do, however, involves thinking not just about what texts look like when they are finished but also about what strategies writers might employ to produce those texts. Knowledge about writing is only complete with understanding the complex of actions in which writers engage as they produce texts. Such understanding has two aspects. First is the development, through extended practice over years, of a repertory of routines, skills, strategies, and practices, for generating, revising, and editing different kinds of texts. Second is the development of reflective abilities and meta-awareness about writing. This procedural understanding helps writers most when they encounter difficulty, or when they are in the middle of creating a piece of writing. How does someone get started? What do they do when they get stuck? How do they plan the overall process, each section of their work, and even the rest of the sentence they are writing right now? Research, theory, and practice over the past years has produced a richer understanding of what writers do -- those who are proficient and professional as well as those who struggle.
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