Text Dependent Analysis Paper

Like most people, I have been writing since my early childhood. My earliest memory of writing goes as far back as kindergarten, where my teacher gave me the task of creating a short sentence describing a picture. When I was growing up, I hardly used writing outside of school. Writing a letter to Santa Claus every Christmas is the extent of my writing for fun as a child. Although, given the number of essays I have had to write throughout my school years along with the fact that my mother is a bibliophile and has always encouraged me to read and write as much as I can, I have undoubtedly developed a close relationship with writing. Despite being forced to write nearly my entire life, I do not dislike writing; rather, I do not especially care

Using a writing workshop in the classroom can be extremely valuable. This strategy can take some time and needs to be flexible throughout. The teacher can spend a few days a week promoting writing through different stations and tasks. Each day in the week exposes the students to the different points in the writing process and allows students to spend more time mastering this skill. I think that this form of strategy can be extremely helpful in the development of the writing skill, and I would certainly use it in my future classroom.

Writing an essay is not something that that kids want to be doing because the essay they are writing often is about something they are not interested in that is why some people believe that you should write about things that interest you so that you do want to write that essay. And to people that want to do so are Jimmy Santiago Baca and Gerald Graff in both these essays, Rob Baker’s “Jimmy Santiago Baca: Poetry as Lifesaver” and Gerald Graff’s “Hidden Intellectualism”, they talk about their experiences with how they got to wanting to inspire kids to write. Jimmy Santiago Baca and Gerald Graff both want to inspire kids to want to write, but Baca believes that you should write about yourself through poetry and Graff believes that you should write about things that interest you to want to write.

From a young age, children in a first world country are expected to have the ability to read and write. But if you think about this, more than 100 million youths in the world are illiterate (UNESCO). Growing up in a place where pencils and papers are scarce, being able to read and write is a blessing, yet most kids in America just see it as something they’re forced to do in school. Although most children write just for educational purposes, I see writing as something much more. Writing truly allows for a greater emotional output than other types of communication and in my rhetorical self, it is an incredible way to express myself and my thoughts to others.

The intro to chapter 9 in Cunningham & Allington(p.150) made me chuckle a bit, as I have many times asked that especially to my youngest son who “strongly disliked” writing up all the way through 8th grade. And he was not that amused over my question. I do believe that he was mostly thinking about how he could get out of the writing task altogether more than what to write. Fortunately now, a changed student, as a freshman in High School his attitude towards writing has greatly improved. I can only imagine how many other students are facing the same frustrations, and how inventive teachers have to be to encourage all students to write.

Reading and writing are two very important skills. These skills allow students to be successful, life long learners. Along with many other skills, one place students learn how to read and write is school. As an educator it is my job to ensure that students learn these essential skills, so that they can be successful, life long learners. It is important to know that writing-to-learn is different from learning-to- write. Writing-to-learn is different as the final product is not a piece that has undergone several edits (Knipper & Duggan, 2006). Writing-to-learn is the short informal pieces of writing that can be used in a lesson for students to reflect on subject matter and explore their own learning (Colorado State University, 2015). Where

Moreover, the primary text aims to increase customer satisfaction by instructing the reader, the customer, in detail how to use the device, how to get registered and how to buy books. It also instructs what to do if the reader has problems with the device. "If you have problems with your Kindle, please contact customer service" (Primary text: 6). It states the web address for the customer service, but also phone numbers in the USA and outside the USA. The pictures are very descriptive and easy to understand, as is the language. The sender also takes the reader into account by addressing the reader with expressions such as "your reading material", "your Kindle" and "your Amazon account" (Primary text: 3), which might leave a good impression

Students need to be able to write to a specific audience, so in this step students should write about a topic and they should write as their group is their audience. Then when they are done with their writing, they will share their writings with their group. Sharing their writings to their groups helps them to rely information to readers. Then as an assessment, teachers should be able to notice a difference in the students writing compared to when they first started the guided writing. As the students go through this process, it is to help them realize new strategies to help their writing, as well as becoming a better writer. The students themselves should also notice how their writing has improved and the different strategies for what they learn during this process.

Shared writing is an authentic learning process that helps students to learn necessary skills of writing process. In the instructional process of shared writing, teachers compose text together with the students (Ukrainetz, Cooney, Dyer, Kysar & Harris, 2000, p.334). I use the approach of writing aloud process with my students to describe and model out the different stages of the writing process. In this process, I combine the shared writing strategy by participating in writing, along with my students and provide guidance and support so that they feel confident to contribute their ideas and thoughts. Additionally, I guide my students to focus on the specific elements of writing to produce the final writing piece.

In their research study, Kapka, and Oberman (2001) focused on the writing process as an approach to foster the students’ writing skills. The targeted group of third and fifth graders scored low in writing due to their poor writing skills. To overcome this issue, the process writing with its five steps: pre-writing, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing was introduced. Even though this approach is a process, teachers dealt with students according to their different needs. Thus, students were given the freedom to choose topics of their interest. Besides, students were given the opportunity to write at different pace and with the flexibility of going back and forth through the steps. The results of this study showed the effectiveness of the writing process. Students at both schools gradually fostered their writing skills and acquired new ones, and this made their writing scores improve.

Writing is something that most people will encounter every day, whether they are composing a personal email or typing a professional resume. In a time when “text talk” is something that we have grown accustomed to, it can be ease to allow our writing skills to suffer. While being a good writer is important in school, these same skills can help you to advance in your career as well (Bethel University, 2014). Throughout Unit 2 we not only learned the benefits of being a good writer, but we were also given tips to help ensure we become the best writers we can be. By teaching the kids I work with basic rules of writing, I hope to give them confidence in their writing. Also, teaching the kids to speak properly will not only improve their

One goal for conferencing with my students is to teach them one strategy that they could use to improve their writing and not look at editing. Lucy Calkins stated “We are teaching the writer and not the writing. Our decisions much be guided by ‘what might help this writer’ rather than ‘what might help this writing.” (Calkins, 1994) With this being said I will need to keep this in mind when working with my students

In the beginning, writing was fun and new. It was something interesting, something that I had never done before and something that would crack open my head and allow all of the creative juices to flow. However, the more I learned about writing the less it appealed to me. Letters and sentences were simple and easy to get a point across, then they had to be punctuated correctly or you failed, words needed to be elaborate and contorted in ways I had never understood otherwise you failed and if the story wasn’t long enough you failed. Writing is something that should be enjoyed by all, not something that is forced on to us. The education system does a pretty good way of ruining that.

The lack of time that these students spend on writing directly correlates to their lack of writing skills. For example, my coaching teacher spends the most time out of the four third grade teachers on this subject area. Granted, this is only one or two days a week. She begins every writing day with a discussion on what she is looking for in the area that they are writing on, then she gives them forty five minutes to an hour to work on their piece. Other teachers may only spend fifteen minutes a day on writing, but they try and fit it in five days a week. I do not think this time allotted to practice is helping to improve students writing and from what I have learned using Best Practice my thinking is supported.

Learning how to first write, I believe, for kids is always fascinating, because it is something new to them. Starting out is simple, such as writing letters of the alphabet and slowly progressing into writing words, sentences, paragraphs, and whole papers. Even though I was a creative kid, through the years of elementary school it began to become tougher. I ran into obstacles when I was told to write a comic strip, a short story, and a paper about ourselves. Not being able to write what was coming to my mind in a manner that made sense frustrated me. Throughout elementary school I struggled with writing because I never figured out how to fix this problem. During these years I succeeded in reading and I would soon hope to in writing.