Not sure where to put this so plopped it into the Office party for now. Feel free to move it if you can think of a better place (doesn't seem to quite fit anywhere else).
There have been a few threads recently on education. One was asking for ideas for an elemntary school writing class while another (the 10,000 hours one) branched off into discussion about what valuable education in writing you get at school.
So, I thought I would set up a thread specifically to ask the question: what could schools, teachers and education in general do to improve education for wannabe writers?
Now, I no longer teach English (I chose to teach secondary which means I gave up the only thing I enoyed about primary teaching which is moulding young minds in literacy) but when I did I did practise a little 'education in writing'. For example, on one lesson the task was 'write a fantasy story' (it was more specific than that, with proper objectives and stuff but I will keep this simple). As I was going round looking at pupil work I came across a beautifully written piece and gave the appropriate positive comments. However, in teaching there is always supposed to be room for improvement so I looked at the dialogue and said 'Do you think people really talk like that?'. You see, being a good writer of English, this girl had used proper grammar for all her characters' speech. We talked about it for a bit, I gave her some things to think about and I think she learnt something about the craft of writing from this.
So, what methods do you think schools and teachers should use to encourage young writers to improve?
There have been a few threads recently on education. One was asking for ideas for an elemntary school writing class while another (the 10,000 hours one) branched off into discussion about what valuable education in writing you get at school.
So, I thought I would set up a thread specifically to ask the question: what could schools, teachers and education in general do to improve education for wannabe writers?
Now, I no longer teach English (I chose to teach secondary which means I gave up the only thing I enoyed about primary teaching which is moulding young minds in literacy) but when I did I did practise a little 'education in writing'. For example, on one lesson the task was 'write a fantasy story' (it was more specific than that, with proper objectives and stuff but I will keep this simple). As I was going round looking at pupil work I came across a beautifully written piece and gave the appropriate positive comments. However, in teaching there is always supposed to be room for improvement so I looked at the dialogue and said 'Do you think people really talk like that?'. You see, being a good writer of English, this girl had used proper grammar for all her characters' speech. We talked about it for a bit, I gave her some things to think about and I think she learnt something about the craft of writing from this.
So, what methods do you think schools and teachers should use to encourage young writers to improve?