Dragonflies Skimming Across The Water
I keep coming back to this post over at Beyond School. Before I became a tech-learning blowhard with an opinion on everything, I was a writing lab teacher, and I always felt that the overly simplified, schoolish way we have of talking about writing was more for the convenience of teachers and test-writers than anyone else. Clay Burell points out that in China, they have a completely different way of talking about writing; it's fascinating. Go read it.
I very often think back to the days when a certain colleague would make her annual announcement that she was yet again starting the year with "a comparison-contrast" essay because that was something concrete the kids could latch onto. As if such a thing exists in nature--I've been looking for a comparison-contrast essay all my life. Never found one. Oh, there have been a few pieces that had a comparisony-contrasty architecture, but they were so indescribably bad that I would never wave them around in front of children as an example of something to which they might aspire as writers.
And then there's the whole six traits of writing rubric. Don't get me started.
And then there's this:
I very often think back to the days when a certain colleague would make her annual announcement that she was yet again starting the year with "a comparison-contrast" essay because that was something concrete the kids could latch onto. As if such a thing exists in nature--I've been looking for a comparison-contrast essay all my life. Never found one. Oh, there have been a few pieces that had a comparisony-contrasty architecture, but they were so indescribably bad that I would never wave them around in front of children as an example of something to which they might aspire as writers.
And then there's the whole six traits of writing rubric. Don't get me started.
And then there's this:
