This chapter was all about the teacher raising his/her expectations for students and their quality of work. I was actually happy to read that all those long and extensive research reports are really not the best way to teach writing but instead learn what it means to explore writing in depth.
I especially liked what it said on page 54, "Competence leads to confidence, which leads to wanting to write."
I am not really a worksheet fan, I think that they are meaningless to the students and therefore the students don't put forth their best effort. Routman says that worksheets foster mediocrity so instead teachers should find lessons that students will find interesting, relevant, and challenging.
I love to let my students have free write everyday but I have found that they are always whinning that they don't know what to write about. According to the book giving students choice for free writing everyday foster endurance and fluency to pass writing state assessments. This is something that I would like to make a part of my class time everyday.
I also agree that something has to be done with the quality of students handwriting. If I can not read what the student read and they can't either there is definately a problem. My students form letters in the weirdest way slowing their writing down because they are spending time forming the letters.
Something that stuck in my mind after watching the video about the English teacher is that without trust from the students, it's impossible to teach.
Trust is vital to working with students. Its so sad that the blogger we discussed violated that trust so terribly. I can't think of worse things to say about students than what she did and she destroyed any future trust she could possibly create, especially with the tender-hearted. You made a lot of great points in this post. I enjoyed reading it and I like the quote at the end.
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