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Emily Brown
Short Formal Reflection
Dr. Roggenbuck
2/26/2014
Think as a Student but Teach as a Teacher
Future teachers, I am pleased to write this essay for you in hopes you can see what I (a
college student) have learned over the years and also from one very effective writing class.
What I am about to explain are different techniques in order to help your students or future
students write well written essays. My goal for you future teachers, not just in English, but in all
subjects, help these students by showing great strategies for producing the best paper that they
can possibly write.
First, lets start off by what I have learned over the many years of schooling. When we
were about to write an essay, my teachers would make us organize our thoughts into web-
diagrams. Even though using a web-diagram was great in elementary school; it was not as
effective for middle school. In middle school we were taught to free-write first as part of the
writing process. Free-write allows students to write down anything that may happen to pop into
their head. This is in hopes that the student will be able to find a grove that they get into about
the topic they are supposed to write about. Once the free-write is complete, students were asked
to underline a common theme that they found. After the students had completed this task they
were asked to start writing an outline or summary. Once the outline or summary was written a
Commented [EB1]: Writing to the audience
Commented [EB2]: One aspect of prewriting
Commented [EB3]: Over used word
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draft would then follow, and after that the final draft was produced. This process is not a
sufficient way to teach students how to write properly.
I did not forget about high school education but I will mention that in a little bit. A
person who I have found to be extremely helpful when it comes to writing is Linda Flower and
John R. Hayes. In their article The Cognition of Discovery: Defining a Rhetorical Problem, the
two of them explain that a well written text is one that has mastered the thought process during
writing the paper or essay. What Flower and Hayes mean is, writers dont find meaning, they
make them. (476) It is important to teach our students this saying because I know from personal
experience in the classroom, the students are always trying to find the correct answer in some
type of way.
Another aspect the students try to create in their paper while writing is, they try to write
and speak the way that they think the teacher wants them too. The students want to get a good
grade, therefore they will produce a paper that they think the teacher would want to see in order
to be able to receive a good grade. However, this is not the case. What the most important
aspect for the students to know is, the way they say, think, interpret, and produce their work is
what teachers are really looking for. What the students think and believe proves their
understanding of the material being taught. Flower and Hayes say it best, this act of creating
ideas, not finding them, is at the heart of significant writing. (468)
I will not say it is easy to teach writing, or that it will not take time, however, it is doable
and the students will learn efficiently. One thing an article has taught me was to keep the
audience in mind. It is important for writers to do so that way you and the writers know how to
conduct the paper and organize yours and their thoughts. From past experiences, I did not
Commented [EB4]: Poor way of organization
Commented [EB5]: Stating scholars
Commented [EB6]: I always tried to find the answer. Good
quote to use.
Commented [EB7]: Should have been plural
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always keep my audience in mind; I always assumed that my teacher would just be the audience.
However, a good idea to keep in mind is to tell your students is that they should write to
someone else other than you as the teacher. In the article A Method for Teaching Writing, Peter
Elbow states, the students best language skills are brought out and developed when writing is
considered as words on paper designed to produce a specific effect in a specific reader. (119)
Therefore, it is important to tell your students while they write to keep the audience in mind and
make it clear what they are trying to get across to that specific audience. There are many
different types of techniques to get your students to write this way.
For example, if you are having the students write an essay on a book they just read, in
the directions for their assignment, state that they are going to write as if they are sending this
essay into a publisher. This will help them think more in-depth about their assignment and
produce great work. Or, lets say you are teaching a history course and want your students to
write a report on the battle at Gettysburg, in your directions you can tell your students to write as
if their audience is a historian and they want their essay to be published in their museum. Also,
lets not forget about the science or math subjects either. If you are teaching math the students
can write a word problem and tell a story to go along with that word problem. Or, for the subject
of science, you can have your students write to a scientist on an experiment they just conducted.
There are many little tricks to get your students to write to an audience no matter what subject
they might be in.
One other important aspect to writing and teaching writing to student is something that I
have mentioned before. The students must have a voice in their own writing. This is known as
the persona. Flower and Hayes explain that the persona is, projected self, or voice the writer
wishes to create. (474) This is where the writer starts to get a flow of writing going. The
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students know who they are talking to but now need to put a voice behind the writing to express
what they are trying to say or compel.
Next a writer needs to have meaning. The meaning could be represented as a goal.
Explaining what the writer wants to say and explore. If the writers have preset goals, then they
will most likely dig deeper into searching for that meaning that I have mentioned before. The
students will eventually get that ah-ha moment and once that strikes, the writing will become
more meaningful and engaging.
The steps that I mentioned before are what I find to be the most beneficial to good
writing. I will quote Flower and Hayes one last time because I strongly believe in what they
say. They stated, [i]f we can teach students to explore and define their own problems, even
within the constraints of an assignment, we can help them create inspiration instead of waiting
for it. (pg 477) Therefore, encourage and challenge your students in their writing, just like I do
with mine. They might not enjoy it at first, or even ever, but it will benefit them for life after the
classroom.
Before I go on and explain what I believe we should not do in the classroom, I want to
share a little trick that I found to be successful in my classroom. I often have my 8
th
grade
students read a story or article, and then I have them write an essay explaining that story or
article. I have had personal experience when using this wonderful technique and I wanted to
share this with you since it has been successful when I teach writing. I use an alphabetism
AOEQ. This is used to help the students remember all the steps they should include in their
essay. I explain that they can remember it by this short phrase, Awesome Open Ended
Questions. The A represents answer and audience. The students must answer all parts of the
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assignment. I want my pupils to also have an audience in mind that way they know how to write
in an appropriate manner. Next, the O represents organize. Organizing their thoughts will
allow for the audience to understand what is being said in a systematic and well thought out way.
Following the letter O is E, E stands for explaining. My students must explain in great
detail what they are trying to get across to the reader. I make sure that I explain that when they
write, they should assume that the audience has no idea what they are talking about. The
students must include their own thoughts in this process. Last is the letter Q. Q stands for
quote. For my scholars to have a strong argument or explanation, I make them quote the passage
they just read. This is not only for support, but it also lets them practice how to use a direct
quote. Before I came up with this little trick, I was not seeing very well written essays since they
were always missing parts of the assignment, and since the PSSAs are always on the back of
teachers minds, it is important for students to do well. I am sure this will work with all grade
levels. I have not been able to test it out on other grades yet, but it works very well with my 8
th

graders.
As I have mentioned before, I will now talk about the high school education and what we,
as teachers, should do to help promote and teach writing. Although writing is important in all
grade levels, high school is where I see the most emphasis on writing papers and essays, since
the PSSAs, Keystone exams, and SATs are more prominent. However, lets start off by what
should not happen in the classroom. As teachers, we should not ignore the students drafts on
papers or essays they need to compose. In the classroom there should be a strong understanding
that no paper is perfect until there is at least a rough draft with many revisions. It is easy for
students to be able to start off typing away at the computer and disregard what they are writing.
It is easy for anyone to go ahead, not like that they read, highlight it and delete it. However, I
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feel that the students are missing the point about a rough draft. A rough draft is there to collect
their thoughts. It might not be organized at first or make a whole lot of sense, but thats the
point. If students start writing a rough draft and reread and keep correcting errors on paper, they
will be able to see where their thought process is heading and find out on their own if their paper
is making sense. Therefore, in the classroom, teachers should not ignore the rough draft, but
enhance it, due to the fact this would allow the teachers to see the students thought process as
they are composing their papers. Just like Nancy Sommers states in her text Revision Strategies
of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers, found in The Norton Book of Composition
Studies, [i]t is a sense of writing as discovery-a repeated process of beginning over again,
starting out new-that students failed to have. (331) Therefore, teachers, need to make sure that
the students need to write rough drafts, not only to correct mistakes, but to be able to process
their thoughts and rethink and rediscover their connections.
What I have covered is certainly not all that it takes to teach good writing, however, it
is a start. From experience, it is important to be flexible to students learning and accept that
they are not all experts at first. But, with some work and dedication, we as teachers will be able
to give them all the techniques they need to be successful and good at writing. Time will be
needed and so will patience, but I know that these students have the potential. Good writing
takes practice and thats what teachers of writing are here for. Share your knowledge of what it
takes to be a good writer and sooner or later the students will pick up on it as well.



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Works Cited
Elbow, Peter. "A Method for Teaching Writing." Jstor. 30.2 (1968): 119. Print.
Flower, Linda, and John R. Hayes . The Cognition of Discovery: Defining a Rhetorical
Problem. 1st edition. New York: The Norton Book of Composition Studies, 2009. 468-
477. Print.
Sommers, Nancy . Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers. 1st
edition. New York: The Norton Book of Composition Studies, 2009. 331. Print.