Why should teachers teaching writing use the six broad writing approaches?

 

Ciao guys. I hope everyone enjoyed my last blog 😊 <3  

As a teacher at the primary level, I can recount many times children’s desire to write as one lacking enthusiasm.  This occurs when they are given a topic to write about in Language Arts, some students find it difficult to develop their thoughts, while others may take a while to come up with the correct phrases or words to use in their writing pieces, some may even be struggling to form their letters correctly which may take them some time as they struggle to complete their writing piece, all just to name a few of the many problems I have seen when given the task. Hence, more has to be done in the classroom to foster students' love of writing as well as their awareness and respect of its purpose, and to do this here is where teachers such as myself need to incorporate these six approaches for teaching writing within the classroom.

What are these six (6) approaches for teaching writing?

·        Penmanship Approach

·        Rules-Based Approach

·        Process Approach

·        Genre Approach

·        Strategy Approach

·        Multimodal Approach

 

Penmanship Approach

Children learn to write using the Penmanship approach, which emphasizes transcription where the physical act of writing by making legible, correct, and often nicely formed letters on a page are done. Children learn to write by copying what they have seen written and then practicing writing the same letters. This can be done by using copied models from printed copybooks or by teachers showing students the step-by-step process of writing each letter through teacher-led demonstrations in which students write letters in unison as the teacher gives verbal commands. Eventually, all children who begin by practicing single letters, are then able to write words, then sentences, and paragraphs.

Let’s take a look at how it is done:

Rules-Based Approach

Grammar is essentially taught through the rules-based approach, which teaches kids how to correctly write words and sentences. These skills were initially taught in "grammar" classes and were separated from "writing" (penmanship) education. However, as children started coming up with their own ideas and sentences, grammar and writing teaching merged. 

 

Let’s take a look at how this can be done using the activity ‘sentence combining’:

Process Approach

 

With the Process Approach, teachers walk students through each step of the writing process. With this method, teachers move away from the view that written texts are a collection of grammatically correct sentences which then allows students to learn how to generate ideas, create their drafts from these ideas, then edit and rewrite those drafts to equate to a written piece that can be published.

 

When I first heard about this approach, I decided to research it via YouTube. Take a look at this video I found which will make it all clear for you:  

Genre Approach

The Genre Approach focuses on teaching writing that demonstrates how to write various kinds of texts. The premise that writing is situational provides the foundation for the concept of genre, and as a result, what constitutes "excellent" writing depends on the context, purpose, and audience.

 

The Genre Approach can be very beneficial for your students. Take a look at how to teach the genre approach: 

Strategy Approach

Through the strategy approach, teachers teach strategies that contain defined stages that lead students through each stage of the writing process. In going about this strategy, teachers clearly describe each phase in the writing process and show students how to do it by modeling the activities and ideas involved in each step. Later, once they have mastered each technique, the students will practice it, first with the teacher and then with peer guidance, and after on their own.

Using an example of this approach; R.A.C.E shown in these videos will help to gain a visual understanding of how these strategies within this approach can be used in developing the writing pieces of your students within your classroom:

 

Multimodal Approach

Writing employing many modes, such as written, oral, non-verbal, and visual, to interact with audiences and persuade them is a multimodal approach to writing teaching. It recognizes that students now write differently than they did in the past. However, despite the prevalence of digital, multimodal writing in our daily lives, many primary school pupils still generate traditional pencil-and-paper texts in the classroom because the necessary technology is either too expensive or the curriculum emphasizes traditional paper-based writing, but teachers can still incorporate some task including the use of picture cut-outs, music or video clippings to aid in the publishing of their writing pieces and much more.

 

Let's take a look at how this presentation uses the multimodal approach where he gives examples and explanation of this approach: 

Lit102 this week was short coming off of the mid-term break but was rewarding as we gained information about the approaches to teaching writing which once integrated will be successful in the classroom in getting students to where they need to be in their writing. Solidifying the information learned by working in our groups to bring forth our general understanding of the approach (process approach which was selected) and to also let the other classmates know what this approach is, and the advantages and disadvantages of this approach, all through demonstration.

 

Have you ever used any of these approaches within your teaching before knowing it was a writing approach?