Raise or Raze?

I feel that I will be forever tainted as far as reading and writing go for teaching composition. Bartholomae, Petrosky, Salvatori, Coles…I’m sold! I see the absolutely necessity of teaching these skills together, and I don’t think that I can ever go back to separating them. I did have to separate them in the past, and now I see how futile it was. I was basically focusing on skills-based activities….because we couldn’t really dig deeper.  Learning needs to be constructive – where the teacher focuses on connecting cognitive, reading, and writing abilities in whatever readings, writings, and discussions are done.  Critical thinking should revolve around the assigned readings, and I believe that all of the writing assignments need to be tied to the readings. This gives the students a chance to be active participants and engage in a dialectical system where they can question what they read, what they talk about, and also write about. Students can write journals on the readings that they are doing – they can be reflective journals that are there for them to tease out meaning and understanding about the texts they read. They can come to class prepared to discuss the readings…they have read, they have brainstormed and written in their journals…and now they can discuss. These are just some of the ways that the readings move from being silent (the students before they were put in a situation where they were asked to read and engage with their readings actively) to being fully active and engaged.  Students can dig deep – and they will soon see that they have a lot to say. Dynamic interactions orchestrated by the teacher (facilitating, planning, organizing) will be good for the students.  All along, the students can then add to their notebooks notes from the class discussions…they will work in small groups, brainstorm, discuss, write on the board or on note paper.  I guess this is more a workshop approach.  They learn about audience – they will have each other to listen to, get feedback from, give advice to. They are learning to represent these stories of the authors in their own ways…interpreting the text from their own perspectives….rewriting the history themselves.  This way of organizing a reading and writing class is steeped in theory.  The text can’t remain silent for understanding to take place.  After the students are done engaging actively with the text, they will then write an essay.  All of this is transactional – students learn to respond to the language of the author, their classmates, themselves.  Soon the students will learn to draw conclusions from the authors and the text and it will make them stronger readers and writers as well as being better students. They will learn to go back to the text…re-read…re-see….”re-write” the text as they revise their ideas and interpretations. This interactive dialogic approach to combining reading and writing empowers the students.