Something Creative: Developing the Well-Rounded Writer in the High School English Classroom
- UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
- Taylor R. Kane (Creator)
- Institution
- The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
- Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/
- Advisor
- Jeanie Reynolds
Abstract: This Thesis looks to address the issue of well-rounded writing due to a lack of creativity by both educators and students within the public high school English classroom. With the increase of technology and “teaching to the test”, standards for writing excellence have decreased as a whole across the nation. Rather than seeing students think about their writing aloud or write in genres other than an essay format, we see such teaching strategies as the “5 Paragraph Essay” and the “3-4 sentence paragraph”. Students come to college completely unprepared for college level writing and are often at a loss when it comes to scholarly writing. This Thesis will address the concern for well-rounded writing skills for students in the high school classroom. I am looking to explore the following problem: the lack of creative variety in writing in the high school English classroom, in that, writing is no longer for the student’s personal educational and scholarly success, but rather for the student’s, and ultimately the school’s, benefit of passing the state exams. There becomes a battle of personal academic accomplishment versus state-mandated success. Common Core and state and national standards seem to have left many teachers at a loss of how to teach writing that is not merely for the purpose of passing the state exams. The fault does not lie in the students nor the teachers, but rather, the educational system as a whole. When it comes to writing, we are failing students, and something needs to be done to effectively prepare students as writers. I propose a solution of Multi-Genre Projects in the high school classroom that incorporate additional methods of structured self-reflection and discussion of writing through Teacher-Student conferencing and appropriate and effective Peer Reviews. The Multi-Genre Project is a multi-faceted approach to writing that incorporates multiple genres of literature over the course of a single unit. This Thesis investigates what the MGP is and how it functions in a classroom. Through research from leading educators like Tom Romano and Peter Elbow, as well as through an in-depth example and analysis of my own MGP, teachers are able to better understand how to incorporate more writing variety for their students.
Something Creative: Developing the Well-Rounded Writer in the High School English Classroom
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Created on 1/7/2015
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Additional Information
- Publication
- Honors Project
- Language: English
- Date: 2014
- Keywords
- english, english education, secondary education, teaching of writing, writing, multigenre, multigenre research, mgp