The first chapter of Carol Jago’s “Cohesive Writing” wasn’t as interesting as the Christensen text and I didn’t really agree with her first thought of free writing to help students start a paper. I think that free writing is a great exercise to get students comfortable with writing but not to start a paper. I know that if I was to free write a paper I would most likely drift off the original topic. This may not be the case with everyone but I think it might be hard for a student to start a paper with a free write. But, I guess if you can begin with a free write and revise it later you may be able to successful start a great paper with the free write as a start, but this might not work for everyone. I really did like the question paper idea. It was a great idea for getting the students thinking about how to begin a paper or how to gather their thoughts on their topic. I think that this exercise gets the students started on the critical thinking to build a paper.
The ending subject of chapter one was about creating a good prompt that engages the students in thinking about the novels most important themes. I think a good prompt is a great way to get students thinking about the novel or poem in a different and more detailed way other than the plot. Prompt’s that engage the students thinking help them to begin to think of a thesis statement for a possible essay. I think that prompts are a good start for thesis development but the content of the question must be very direct and precise in what the teacher wants the student to think about. It’s going to be hard to create prompts that get to the point while making the student think as well. I think that the analysis of the prompts by Jago helped me to understand the correct way to create prompts. It was very beneficial in the analysis of how to ask certain questions.
Chapter two of Jago on Teaching Persuasive and Informational writing was full of useful tips on how to get students started on writing different kinds of essays. I like how she encouraged them to use the news that they cared about to make them think. I think that allowing students to write on subjects that that interest them allow them to think without knowing that they are practicing writing essays. I that students are more interested in subjects that pertain to the things they like. Jago even states that before when the students were given texts to write about that they were foreign to their thoughts were not as developed as the essay’s they wrote about topics that interested them. Jago’s approach to writing Persuasive and Informational essay’s was great in how it tackle the students’ fears about writing essays or articles. I think that the students were more interested because it gave them an opportunity to voice their opinions on subjects that they rarely get a chance to take stand on. I think that exercises that Jago prepared worked to make the students enjoy writing. Like writing in a journey or diary, the essay’s gave them a chance to talk about serious or engaging topics on from their perspectives and I think that is the most important aspect of teaching writing: allowing the students to think for themselves and express their thoughts in their writing.
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