Britton Blog

Britton:

1.     Does writing always begin as written down speech?  I wonder if we were to look at how students visualize language first. Would there be a difference in writing patterns between students who learned phonics vs. whole language? How do students come to understand speech as something visual on the paper? How does speech become dialogue that becomes a story? I think that is the natural progression. Students first write down what they are most thinking of. Is there a specific thought they are trying to express, or the running commentary that Britton refers to, or is there a certain social interchange that shows a thought that they are trying to express? Whichever the child is more experienced with will most likely influence the style and focus of their novice writing.

I am interested in the idea of questioning and how that impacts a student’s ability to transfer sustained speech onto the page. Are these questions that teachers ask are what help train students on how to think about what they will say or write next. Do these questions help them anticipate what we readers/listeners are looking for in a story? Will these questions help students sustain their own discourse, or will it breed a dependence upon such prompts?

2.     Throughout the article, Britton asks us to visualize in graphic organizers how students develop their written language. Britton states that as students build their repertoire of different forms of writing, they will begin to apply those forms to their own writing. This seems similar to when a child hears an adult use new word. The child begins to employ that new word in his own vocabulary. Sometimes he misuses the word, but he learns quickly through trial and error in what specific contexts and for what purposes the word is used. This same principle applies to written language.

The visual I get from this article is something like this:...well, this diagram I created didn't post, so...?

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The bottom line represents the base of student expose to different forms of written language. The upper line represents a students growing expose to different forms of the written language. This line keeps growing upward after it has been through the different forms. This represents the student’s growth after being exposed to different forms of the written language. We all have a starting point…and it is only an incomplete understanding of one form. In order to develop, we must see examples and learn from these examples by doing.

3.) I think that in order for students to respond to what this article suggests, they need a balance of time, freedom to explore, and explicit instruction to supplement their exposure to the new forms of written language.

4.) The way that Britton classifies the different types of writing was a bit difficult to grasp at first. After breaking out in our groups and discussing what we each understood about expressive, transactional and poetic writing. I don’t think that using this jargon with my students would be the most accessible way to instruct different genres. I think that classifying written language as such is useful to me as a teacher. I plan on taking my understanding of each of these three types of writing and making these more tangible to students. Maybe talking about the characteristics of each and giving examples that align with the curriculum, or having students read examples of each would help them understand the different purposes for writing.

Doing so would expose them to new forms and reinforce the importance of purpose and audience in their writing…over time, of course.

1. Expressive= focus on getting basic thoughts out…audience is less important

2. Transactional= specific goal and focus…audience is EVERYTHING.

3. Poetic= writing exists for itself, it is an extended discourse that fits into its own descriptive or poetic form…audience is broad and various for different elements of the piece.