Friday, December 11, 2009

Writing Outside of English Class

Something amazing happened yesterday - something that you'd think would happen all the time, but rarely does. The science teacher on my team conducted a writing lesson during class.

I think it's every English teacher's dream to get the other content areas to buy in to the standards and the guidelines that we set forth for our students' writing. However, the reality is that other subject areas focus on their content and rarely think about matching their writing expectations to ours.

Yesterday, though, Mr. Musselman did just that. Earlier in the week, he approached me about doing a writing lesson, and after a brief conversation in which we actually talked about standards, guidelines, and expectations for writing, he was off planning. Two days later he followed up the assignment with a peer review activity complete with rubrics and FCAs.

After, we talked about how it went, and (thankfully) how easy it seemed to go for him in class - how the students bought into the idea that writing for one class should be the same as writing for another class. Then came my big question...

"Do you think you could do an activity or assignment like this at least once a month?"

With a look of disbelief he said it wasn't even a question. Of course he could. It should be happening all the time.

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