Up until the last week, my students have been working on a piece that has been referred to as their, "for the common good" paragraph. This paragraph was seen as their base line writing piece for my cooperating teacher, and for them, was a build off of something they had done in social studies on the first day of school. I say that this paragraph was simply a build off of "something" they had done in social studies on the first day of school because my third grades, like me, completely lost sight of the point of the piece and of their passion for it by the time they finished it. The sad part was that a lot of my students had really good experiences to write about ranging from "I'm teaching my little brother to speak English," to "I held the door for an old lady because it's the right thing to do."
For better or for worse, we are definitely moving farther and father away from the Wondrous Words world of envisioning text possibilities and figuring out way to make their writing exciting and engaging to read. From now on, we're going to be moving more and more towards the Common Core philosophy of "get to the point and move on," and giving less attention to the craft of the writing, word choice, and detail of the writing. My students writing was uninspired because there was a lack of personal dedication and dedication to the event.
I feel like it’s my job as a teacher to make sure that I strike a balance between writing to inform and writing to tell a story that matters to the writer. In both pieces, the student is writing with a clear purpose that he or she wants her reader to understand and take away from reading the piece. Not only striking the balance between the two types of writing, but also providing adequate feedback on both types of writing is important so that the student knows that both forms are valued and serve a purpose.
