Reflection - Unit Four

Planning for Writing

The basis of the readings, videos and power point presentations provided has shown that students need to go through the writing process in order to be able to begin writing. These readings have informed me that students need to be made aware that before they begin writing strategies such as brainstorming and graphic organizers need to be made use throughout all of the stages of the writing process which begins at the pre-writing stage and ends at the publishing stage in order to develop a well-organized essay. These reading were very informative, as I was aware of the writing process but gained some additional information on the strategies which can be implemented before and during the pre-writing stage in order for students to be able to develop their ideas. 

As a novice teacher, I have never thought of the brainstorming technique as which would prove to be useful in the classroom. Based on the readings, I have realized that it a technique would prove to be very useful in the classroom and one that if utilized correctly will be effective in teaching English in the classroom. Brainstorming is also a valuable tool for students to learn. There are many effective strategies in brainstorming but there are a few which really appealed to me.

Some Effective Strategies for Brainstorming which got me interested were:

Free-writing: which involves students writing about any particular topic of their choice which interests them without having to worry about their spelling or grammatical errors. This strategy allows students to be able to write what they choose and to write their ideas and views as it comes to them. There is no structure to free-writing as students are able to write their ideas as they think of them. This technique appealed to me as the aim of it is not to write a structured essay but to just write and not stop writing. I believe that this strategy will help students in the classroom to be encouraged to write as they are able to choose their own topic and “write freely”.

Listing: which allows students to simply list their ideas about a topic which they can use when they begin writing.  This strategy is useful as students can list topics or ideas which interest them and they would want to write about instead of the teacher providing a topic which may not interest the students.

Clustering: this strategy is another way of allowing students to brainstorm ideas as they are able to list ideas and then to group them in a more organized way. This will help in brainstorming as the students are able to have some form of organization in their ideas.

I also recognized that in order for brainstorming to be effective in the class the teacher needs to be able to be enthusiastic about ideas so that students can be enthusiastic about the ideas in the class. The teacher also needs to make the brainstorming activity fun and exciting so that the students do not view the process as un-necessary and may be unwilling to take part in the process. The teacher also need to re-read students ideas so that the students realize that they ideas are important so that they will be more willing to provide ideas and opinions during the class. Students will be motivated to generate more ideas when this is done.

Writing is a complex process and the use of various strategies such as the graphic organizer can be used to help students to organize ideas and improve their writing. There are various types of Graphic Organizers such as the five W’s and an H Graphic Organizer and also the KWL Graphic Organizer which can be used to help students organize their ideas. The information read stated that Graphic Organizers can be used in the pre-writing stage in order to organize ideas as well as a revising tool in the pre-writing process. This information was beneficial to me as it showed that students are able to use graphic organizers to revise as they are better able to organize their information. 

I was not aware of the strategy by (Graham, Harris, MacArthur, & Schwartz, 1991; Harris

& Graham, 1996) who developed an approach referred to as the self-regulated strategy development (SRSD) model. This approach is a cognitive strategy instruction in that students learn task-specific strategies for composing, such as planning and revising, and this learning is scaffolded to help them master the use of the strategies. Self-regulatory procedures typically include goal setting, self-instructions, and self-monitoring.

In order to use the SRSD model, Planning, and the ability to manage the composing process are especially important skills for novice writers to learn. This is important as this will allow teachers to use planning to teach students with learning disabilities to learn language conventions.

The information gained will impact my teaching of the English language as I have gained new information on the strategies and ways in which I can teach writing to my students. As a novice teacher, I will encourage my students to place emphasis on the writing process and engage my students in brainstorming activities so that they are able to freely list their ideas. I will also encourage free-writing in the class so that I am able to have students view writing as a fun process and not a task where they are provided with topics to write about. I will provide students with the opportunity to choose their own topics to write about that may encourage writing freely in the class.

I would also encourage that as English teachers we should always seek new ways and information to improve the teaching of English as most students view it as a difficult topic and also a boring subject. We should find new ways to make the teaching of English exciting and fun in the classroom so that students can be active participants in the class by the use of various strategies in the classroom such as role-playing and discussions.