- There was an old man named Michael Finnegan.
- He had whiskers on his chinnegan.
- They fell and and then grew in again.
I posted this already as a response to this blog post, but I'm posting it here for myself!
- As a 9-12 teacher, I use the 5 paragraph essay with my lower grades and lower level students. It provides structure to their thinking, especially when they lack the experience to express themselves on literary topics.
With upper level grades or advanced students, we really focus on tight theses and support, not so much on format.
I think the reason that this is an issue with colleges is systemic to both the k-12 system and college system. While it is true that public schools often don’t push students to develop critical thinking skills, and therefore produce poor writers, it is also true that colleges are being run more and more as businesses, and accepting students of lower caliber.
I don’t believe that there has ever been a time in history where a society has attempted to educate, at such a high level, it’s entire populace. So, we have a systemic ‘problem’ that emerges as poorly literate college students, when really they’re highly literate elementary ones.
Our district is really undergoing growing pains as we develop a comprehensive k-12 literacy program. As a 13 year veteran, I’m basically relearning my craft. I don’t think it’s that high schools are necessarily producing less literate students, it’s just that more are choosing to go to college than ever before, and current research in literacy is exposing a gap that we’ve had for quite some time.
Poor old Michael Finnegan.
Begin again.
11 June 2010
Begin Again
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Talking out of my onion here, but...I think these staples of writing are taught as a BASIS for writing, not as what they are to become. Your students can use the system, but by college most students should be able to understand how to express themselves further than the basic guide, using the paragraph structure as a starting point, not the be-all-end-all. It is like teaching a kid to ride a bike. Show them the basics, eventually they will teach themselves to ride with no hands, pop wheelies, and will probably wreck a few times and have to reevaluate. Some will always just ride, but others will get a bike bell and put a card in the spokes. But hey, I like to write. Don't ask me to do math. I still need training wheels.
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