Hi! We had really interesting joint meeting yesterday of our History and English departments. While in the middle school, the existence of the Humanities course assures integration of these two subject areas, in our upper school, there is a real need - and desire - to search for more ways to integrate and collaborate in grades 9-12 (yay upper school teachers!).
We quickly hit on the idea of stressing purpose, genre, and audience in both departments, the better to help students focus on that important part of the writing process and also to help them see that the five-paragraph essay (for example) is neither suitable for every topic nor something to be avoided altogether. So far, so good. We didn't mention editing, but that is obviously an easy way to collaborate between the disciplines. We found ourselves unexpectedly venturing into the high country of the mind (as Robert Pirsig called it) in looking at all stages of the process to see what similarities and differences we could find. For example, one teacher suggested that the *source* of evidence used in history papers tends to be different from the source of evidence in English papers even if the overall goal is to write an analytical paper, and that changes one's pre-writing approach. This question is tugging at my mind. There are so many skilled minds in this group - what do *you* think students need to do when writing both history and English papers, and what differences do you see - focusing mostly on the pre-writing and drafting stages? Take care, Bill Ivey Stoneleigh-Burnham School _______________________________________________ The Literacy Workshop ListServ http://www.literacyworkshop.org To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/lit_literacyworkshop.org. Search the LIT archives at http://snipurl.com/LITArchive
