Writing to Learn!!!

            In reading the article by Knipper and Duggan they specifically discussed writing to learn in content area classes, but in the text Fisher and Frey discussed writing to learn in general, for content area classes, and more.  I better understood Fisher and Frey than Knipper and Duggan.  I especially liked the point made when they mentioned, “writing to learn is an opportunity for students to recall, clarify, and question what they know and what they still wonder about.” I believe in allowing the student to write and tell me what they are thinking other than molding them to say what you want them to. You can ask a student questions all day and they answer them right or wrong, but if you allow the student to write what he or she is thinking and give it support to why they are thinking the way they are, you will be able to determine why the student thinks the way they do versus that is just what they think.  I like one of the definitions given for writing to learn because it states that writing to learn involves getting students to think about and to find the words to explain what they are learning, how they understand that learning, and what their own processes of learning involve. I encountered an instructor who did not like the way I wrote my paper and therefore “nick-picked” the whole paper and I got a low score.  She said it did not make sense of what I was writing, but if the paper is written on my thoughts and point of view on education, what gives her the right to say it is wrong? When I based it off my schema, gained from information taught by her colleagues. Fisher and Frey also mentioned that writing to learn can help students learn, understand, remember, and figure out what don’t know.  I like the prompts listed to encourage writing to learn such as: admit slips, found poems, crystal ball, exit slips and especially “What if” scenarios.