A text-to-text thought...

I've been trying to read some of the references listed in the Handbook that apply to my chapter of choice. My chapter/topic is Ch. 31: Identity and the Writing of Diverse Students by Ball & Ellis.

I've read two articles:
1. Mavrogenes & Bezrucko "The Influences of Writing"
2. Langer "Beating the Odds: Teaching Middle and High School Students To Write Well"

Here is a connection I've been thinking about today.
In their article on writing influences, Mavrogenes & Bezruczko (1993) make two specific recommendations based on their study. Their second recommendation is to "...pay attention to affective factors such as teachers' expectation and students' self-confidence" (p. 244) I believe this can be a support for instruction in code-switching for students. Ideally, the affective factor of writing instruction recognizes that students use language in many different ways in their lives, and especially to second language learners or even second dialect learners, those different ways have merit and esteem in their various cultures. I believe there are ways to teach 'standardized' writing that acknowledges this truth.

In her article titled, Beating the odds: Teaching middle and high school students to write well, Langer (2001) points out five different areas of instruction between 'average' schools and those schools who are doing extremelly well. Two areas stuck out to me. One is the way teachers approached skill instruction (integrated vs. separate drills). The second area is evidence of connected learning done for instruction. Of course we can expect that integrated skills instruction was done in the excellent schools. The explanation of connected learning was, "Overt connections made among knowledge, skills, and ideas across lessons, classes and grades, and across in-school and out-of-school applications" This was also done in the excellent schools.

This again connects back to the affective factors. There is a need to use in-school and out-of-school literacies to learn well. This feels deeply connected to a student's self-esteem, AND it takes a very confident and talented teacher to build these connections.

This conversation connects to our class discussion too. We wondered how many writing teachers REALLY know how to teach writing or even how to write effectively themselves? This drastically impacts a teacher's self-confidence (affective factor) and therefore, the ability and/or desire to make connections that might be new and unfamiliar to students' 'out-of-school applications"....