Hi all, This email hit home in my middle school. It brought me to Chris Tovani's book "Do I Really Have to Teach Reading." The title could as easily say, "Do I really have to teach writing". As a former high school English teacher, I do believe that the way we write in both disciplines is different. Students need to know how to be an expert writer in both content areas to be successful in both. An English paper often analyzes a piece of literature. The evidence is based on perhaps set literary conventions/terms. A history paper, however, does something different. A history paper might take documents that need to be synthesized to prove a thesis. This may or may not involve analysis.
Just as we need to show students what an expert reader in each content area does, we need to teach students HOW to write for each content area. Patricia Sankey Reading Specialist Templeton Middle School >>> "Bill IVEY" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 10/11/2006 7:56 AM >>> 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 _______________________________________________ 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
