Personally, I would not consider myself to be a writer. I know that is strange considering I am an English major, but I am actually a terrible writer when it comes to creativity and design. I have to try extra hard to state a specific point in writing, and I am terrible when it comes to my grammar, as most of you can probably see. However, I do enjoy writing. I remember as a child I would tell little stories with pictures and captions. My mom recently found a picture I drew when I was about four that showed my family camping. It had our "trailer" labeled along with the "mowtans", each family member, and our dog. I never realized that this was writing, but fora four year old it was a great detailed picture. For recreation writing now, I mainly just do instagram. I enjoy looking at people's pictures and commenting on them. I also really enjoy keeping a journal of funny things that my little girl says like how she calls a button "butt" I want to preserve the funny memories we ha e of her so the word journal has been a really fun thing for us to do as a family. One writing assignment I remember doing in school was for my Survey of American Culture class I took when I was a freshman in college. For the assignment we had to choose a style of home and do a project that consisted of at least thirty pages of work. For my project I created a scrapbook of the anniversary inn. It was such a fun project because I got to tour the hotel and see all of the fun themed rooms. I enjoyed this assignment because I got to be creative with the report without it only being a paper. It was much more enjoyable to me because I got to choose how to report the information. My least favorite assignment I have ever done was the grant project we were required to write in high school. My teacher did not give us much instruction on how to complete it, and it was just very long and tedious. The thing I disliked the most was that the teacher said it was very important and we would have to use it all the time in our careers, but I can honestly say I do not remember how to write a grant because I have never created one since then. I know I will have to have my students write assignments that they do not particularly enjoy, but I will try to make them as fun as possible by allowing the students to do other forms of writing like scrapbooks, facebook posts, image stories, etc. I do not want the students to hate to write, and I want to see as much creativity in the students work as I can because I think if I had more choices in the style of writing I could use I would be a much better writer and enjoy it more than I do.
Hi Kelbie: Your interest in Instagram brought out an important point for me--that almost all forms of online writing now include different forms of representation. I know that writing printed texts will always be an important skill, but if we want students to communicate in the 'real world,' more and more real world texts seem to be multi-representational. I also think that students sometimes enjoy multi-representational writing more than traditional writing...your example of the Anniversary Inn scrapbook is a good example of that. (What a fun place, by the way.)
ReplyDeleteThanks for your posting!
I agree with you completely. Variety, choice, and a legitimate interest or audience in writing assignments was/is important to me when I write as well. My favorite writing assignments in high school were when I really felt motivated to get my point across, and the teacher gave us choices about how we could present our argument. I'm sure your students will appreciate that you won't use writing as a punishment, but will try to make it fun and exciting and authentic instead.
ReplyDeleteYou have some really great points about how writing isn't always about writing a paper. I like your idea of allowing your students to use writing in a different way to express themselves so that it is something that they enjoy. I can definitely relate to doing things in school that the teacher said was going to be really important but has never come up since then and I am also frustrated by that.
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