While our son is home from college for the Christmas Holiday, I am reminded of the role that texting plays in his life. If I had a dollar for every time his phone buzzed announcing a new text, I would be rich. The text exchanges are predictably short and from what I can see when I snoop over his shoulder, full of abbreviations. While his texting is not unusual, it does help illustrate the dynamic nature of language; things in this realm are not static. Using u instead of you or an acronym such as lol although annoying to the language purists, are more and more the norm for our students. Nevertheless, there is plenty of research to show that teaching students to effectively communicate through writing is a way to float the whole education boat higher.
The Common Core standards in writing that strongly influenced Alaska’s writing standards will lead to the development of writing assessments that may be much more difficult than are our current tests. It is probable that the percentage of our students who score proficient on the new writing assessments will be significantly lower than it is for today’s SBA writing tests. In a shift away from creative expression, the new standards place a greater emphasis on expository and analytical writing. This shift may cause teachers to embrace a more old fashioned, formulaic approach to writing instruction that is frowned on by some teachers. A failing high school on Staten Island adopted such an approach to writing instruction across the curriculum and saw marked improvement in student achievement in many of the content areas. We are thus, at somewhat of a crossroads with written communication. On the one side is students’ relaxed electronic communication, while on the other side is the expectation that our students will be able to write well developed essays. While the creative writing exercise with peer editing will still be a part of writing instruction, the new standards will cause this activity to lose some of its luster. For many of our students learning to write is a hit or miss proposition. To avoid having more misses will require us to be more analytical about our writing instruction.
2 Comments
I definitely see this with my students. We constantly discuss the importance of purpose and audience when writing. Thank you for sharing Dr. Atwater!
With many teachers in the district implementing The Write Tools for expository writing, KPBSD may not have as difficult a time with this shift. The Write Tools has by far been one of the most useful training opportunities in which I’ve participated these past 7 years with the district. Thank you for continuing to support that program; I will again encourage my colleagues to learn and use this system regardless of which content area they teach!