Student Choice in Writing

The best part about writing in college is the freedom to pick (almost) any topic. While some professors structure papers more than others, I have found that I generally have a lot more choice in the topics that I choose to write about than I did in high school.

I find this interesting since a lot of my preparation has been about letting students choose what they write about. I had some choice in high school, but usually it was to pick one of three prompts and write a paper answering that prompt.

Oftentimes, I resented this format.

The books I am using to help research the words
that Shakespeare coined throughout
his career.

Still, in college, I often find myself resenting papers that are so structured I have no room for creativity. While I don’t think that in a high school classroom I can just tell students to write about whatever aspect of such-and-such book that they want, I still think that more choice needs to be given within the prompts that are provided to students.

When students have a choice in what they are writing, they’re automatically more invested in their writing because if they chose a topic, it is often because of an interest they have.

Personally, I know that I have some go to topics that I will write about whenever given the opportunity. One of these topics is Shakespeare.

For my final paper in linguistics, I was given the choice to write about anything, so long as I can somehow connect it to linguistics. As a result, I chose to write about Shakespeare and the words that he created in his plays.

While the morphology of Shakespeare’s words don’t excite everyone as much as they excite me, I am looking forward to doing the research for this paper, as well as writing it, because it’s a topic that I’m invested in.

Oh, the Places You'll Go...

Since I started at Miami, I have been placed in four different schools.

The first two schools that I did my service learning in during my freshman year were a mixture of suburban/rural. For my first experience, I was in a third grade math classroom, and for the second experience, I was in a fifth grade science classroom.

While neither of these experiences was in reading/language arts classroom, I was able to get a better feel for what grades I ultimately wanted to teach, especially since I started out as an Early Childhood Education major.

Also, I went to school in a very suburban environment, so having this mixture of rural was different and interesting to be exposed to.

In the fall, for my high school field experience, I was in a more urban environment, which was a stark contrast to the school I attended. I was glad to have this experience, because my coordinating teacher and the students I taught had a lot to teach me.

This semester, for my middle school field experience, I was in a rural school, which I learned a lot from as well.

On Monday of this week, I learned that I will be in a suburban high school for my student teaching experience in the fall. I didn’t request any school in particular for my placement, so I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I have to say that I am certainly looking forward to meeting my cooperating teacher and learning more about what I will be teaching in the fall.

Middle School Grammar

Photo of posters that I made to help my coordinating
teacher.

Throughout my experiences in classrooms and talking with different teachers, I have found that many schools have moved away from explicitly teaching grammar. However, in the school that I did my middle school field experience, my coordinating teacher was required to teach several different aspects of grammar.

In addition to parts of speech, my coordinating teacher was also teaching students about comma usage and sentence structure, both of which are skills that can help students in the world beyond school when they’re expected to write in Standard English.

Now, I also find this interesting when I approach it from a linguistic point of view. In my linguistics class, we are currently learning about how there is a notion of prestige when it comes to language, but that there really is no reason for this, as no one dialect is better than any other.

With all this in mind, I have given a lot of thought as to how I will support and teach my future students when it comes to grammar instruction. If I have students who speak in a dialect that is different from mine, how do I make them feel their language is valued in my classroom, while also trying to teach them Standard English?

While I don’t have one single solution to this very complex and delicate situation, I have come up with a way to let my students use their own voice in my future classroom.

I fully intend to use writer’s journals in my future classroom, and when students are writing in their journals, they will be free to write in their own dialect and use their own unique voice. Additionally, for certain assignments that students complete, I will let them use their own dialect.

Furthermore, when it comes to the instruction of Standard English, I will do everything in my power to learn as much as possible about my student’s dialect(s) so that I can cater my instruction to suit their needs and set them up for success on assignments in which Standard English should be used.

Certain dialects of English have different grammatical structures, so in order to teach a student a new grammatical structure, they first need to be aware of the grammatical structure of their dialect.

In several of my class this year we have talked about making students feel like their dialect is valued in the classroom, and I am hoping to discover more ways to go about this as I learn more throughout the rest of this semester and through my student teaching experience in the fall.