The Struggle of Good Writing

For me, writing has always been a struggle because of my handwriting and how I was unable to get my thoughts down on paper. So many teachers would come up to me and ask me to read what I  wrote in order for them to figure out what I was saying or they would just mark points off. Then when it came to forming ideas of what to write about and getting the words down on paper, was a major struggle. As a child I enjoyed getting the prompts were you had to create a story, such as ” you find a mysterious box on the playground, what is in it and what do you do?” Then as I got older writing seemed to shed away from the creativity and became more about arguing a point or stating facts. Though its important to know different forms of writing, I don’t think it should lose it’s creative side and especially with the age of new technology, Teachers can bring it back!

Incorporating different types of digital texts into the the classroom would not only allow students to express their creativity, but allow them to relate better to the content the teacher is trying to teach. All teachers have faced the challenges of how to keep students engaged and focused on a lesson, whether it be reading a story to vocab words, there are always going to be students who stray. Or there might be those students who just don’t put forth the effort and don’t want to listen at all to what you have to say. What teachers have to remember is that not every lesson is going to be perfect and reach every student, but as as long as the teacher themselves put forth the effort it will be alright. In my opinion when I saw my teachers with bored expressions and not willing to work them me, it made me not won’t to try at all and lessened my confidence in my writing ability.

(I don’t know how many times I have had this facial expression about writing papers and  many of my classmates have too.)

Here are some tips I think would benefit teachers on how to incorporate digital writing into the classroom, so their students don’t look like the picture above.

•  For informative writing lesson, have students create a blog on a topic that might interest them.
• Allow students to give a presentation arguing a certain perspective on an issue.
• When studying a particular play or book, say Romeo and Juliet, have students create videos with partners of their interpretations of different scenes.
• Have students record themselves reading one of their favorite experts from their favorite book, to show how voice and tone matter with the characters.