Jenny D is doing/has done her dissertation on the writing/reading correlation. What makes better readers of 4th graders?
I don’t teach 4th graders anymore, but “higher writing/medium reading” and “medium writing/higher reading” seem to be good ways to go. Of course, so is “lower writing/medium reading,” but you know that I as a writing teacher am not going there.
It looks like, according to my reading of what she says, that the reason higher writing/ higher reading doesn’t work is the teacher doesn’t have as much time to focus on each piece of work. The class is doing more things related to writing/reading, but in about the same amount of time as everyone else.
Does this say anything for my classes? What is the focus? What should the focus be?
I think that I ought to think about examining fewer samples in 1301, since we do so much writing there. A single excellent example or perhaps one excellent and one mediocre piece, with a discussion of the problems with the mediocre piece, might serve my students better.
I’ve rewritten my syllabus for 1301, but not for 1302 yet. What should I do with it? I like it just about where it is. We’re doing one novel, two plays, a bunch of short stories, and a lot of poems. And maybe one novella. But we’re only writing four papers.
Just a thought, since it was on a similar tangent.