Megan Day's "Writing in the Content Areas: Finding Time to Teach in a Meaningful Way"

It was late Sunday night, and I was finally ready to grade the large stack of Response to Literature essays that I had been avoiding all weekend. I knew I had to finish them by the next morning, but I just could not bring myself to do it. I knew exactly how they would read. The introduction would be a ten sentence summary of the book, ending with a thesis like, “Harry Potter was brave, intelligent, and unique”. Each body paragraph would then contain evidence as to how Harry was in fact all of these things. Each sentence displaying facts would start with, “For example”, while every sentence containing an opinion would begin with, “This shows that…”. I was about to be bored to death for the duration of the evening.

My husband observed my grading and could no longer ignore the grunting and groaning. He hesitantly asked, “What is wrong?”

“Oh, they’re just awful,” I replied, tired and deflated.

“Well that’s okay, just have them change them the next time,” he concluded, and walked away. Next time…what next time? The next time my students would have another chance to write a similar essay would be in the seventh grade, a whole year from now. How would they remember my comments and suggestions, let alone, what a Response to Literature essay was?

It was then and there that I realized I needed to find a way to offer my students multiple opportunities to practice each genre of writing so that when they write the final product for English class, they will be able to expand upon the basic structure while incorporating their own style and voice. I wanted their papers to be organized, but I also wanted them to be more original and unique. My dilemma was how to find the time to do both.

Currently, I am the only writing teacher for all of the sixth grade students at my school. I switch classes with my grade level partner, and have each group for only forty-five minutes. Even though I have the students in my core class for most of the day, I feel that it would be inequitable to give them additional instruction, and I often feel the time crunch to fit all of this material into such a short block each day overwhelming, if not impossible.

Due to these time limitations, I found that I have been teaching more breadth than depth. This can be frustrating, and I am always wishing for more time to teach. Over the years, I have tried to shift the focus from the quantity of writing to the quality of the writing. However, I feel that with only one opportunity to learn each type of essay each year, the students really are not getting the practice they need to feel confident and to retain their skills.

Since this is the students’ first exposure to this type of essay, my main concern is to teach them the basic structure, and then hope they will remember it in junior high school where they will add more of their creativity and personal style to the same type of writing. However, this year I would like to try a slightly different approach.

Given that there is not any more time in my English block, I need to find a place for these writings in other subject areas like social studies, science, and literature. My goal for the summer is to look at each subject area and create several writing prompts in other content areas that will offer the students additional practice. I am certain that this additional practice will help the students feel more confident and comfortable with their writing.

Even if I offer my core class more opportunities, I still have the issue of how to be equitable with both sixth grade classes. Instead of simply fretting about this problem, I have decided to seriously study it and see if more opportunity for process writing does in fact improve the final product.

In addition to being a classroom teacher, I am also working towards my Master’s of Education at Humboldt State University, and I think that evaluating the final products of my two classes this coming year will make a fascinating comparative study and will inform my teaching with real and tested results. I will begin the school year by doing a double blind read of the students’ first formal essay in both classes. Then, after incorporating several opportunities for practice through additional prompts in the content areas for my self-contained class, I will do another double blind read of the essays to see if there is any significant statistical difference in the students’ final grades.

I expect that the students, who have had multiple occasions to practice the basic structure of the writing, will have an easier time with the final product. I hope that this familiarity will allow them to incorporate their own voice and style into their writing, because the basic structure will be familiar and well rehearsed. I also am expecting to find an improvement in their knowledge of the content areas, and I would like to compare their work in these areas as well. The idea of testing my hypothesis with my students is exciting. Not only do I think I have a great topic for my thesis, but I am optimistic that my findings will inspire more teachers to incorporate writing into the content areas in their own classrooms.

I am hoping that my time in the Redwood Writing Project will help me with some of these ideas. Creating my workshop on Writing in the Content Areas has helped me go through the process of critically looking at the big picture in my teaching to see what the students need for each type of essay. Not only does it help my students and me to look more closely at their writing, but it also brings a deeper understanding of the content, which I hope they will retain.

One way to foster depth in a content area through writing is for students to practice a skill for an essay with a topic that has been difficult for them to learn in the past. For instance, each year I struggle to teach latitude and longitude in social studies. I know that it is not the first time my students have learned about these terms, and yet they still confuse the two. Therefore, after I have given my students direct instruction in how to write a summary, and I have reviewed latitude and longitude, I would have my students write a summary explaining these concepts. Rather than write a summary about a brief news article, or simply locate coordinates on a map, this type of assignment promotes a deeper understanding of the topic while giving the students additional practice with summary writing. I anticipate that this change will make the writing process as well as the content areas more meaningful for my students, and that I will find their writing more compelling to read.

I feel fortunate to have had the time to reflect upon my teaching and I look forward to the coming year. I know that this year when I sit down to grade the stack of essays over the weekend that not only will I not be dreading it, but I will be excited to read such original and gripping work. Instead of saying, “Oh, they’re just awful,” I expect I will exclaim, “Listen to this – I can’t believe a sixth grader can write so well!”