I thought Williams brought up a lot of interesting points in this week’s reading about best practices.

When Williams talks about the outline stage of the writing process model, he brings up the biggest problem I had with making outlines for papers in high school, the fact that the structure of the outline tends to be the focus, rather than the content. “…Students spend much effort deciding whether an A must have a B; whether a primary heading begins with a Roman numeral or an upper-case letter…” I had teachers who were real sticklers about the format of the outline being exactly right when you turned it in. To me, the content was more important than the format. I’d rather have an outline chock full of useful information, than one that is formatted correctly. I think I need to point out, though, that the teachers who focused more on the format were not English teachers, they were social studies teachers.

I liked the section on pausing while reading. That’s something I find myself doing a lot. When I pause I usually go back and read what I just finished writing to make sure it makes sense. I can’t just write and write and write. I need to stop and make sure what I’m doing works. However, I am guilty of pausing to go back and fix grammatical and punctuation mistakes. I am trying to get out of that habit and save that kind of editing for later.

I also agreed with Williams that writing assignments should be more meaningful in order to produce better writing. It makes complete sense to me. Students are more likely to go through the motions when doing meaningless writing. Williams makes the point that the students know the only audience is the teacher and that they are simply telling the teacher what they want to hear. I think the pen pal example is great and it is something I could see using in my classroom. It engages the students more and forces them to be more thoughtful in their writing. I also think the students would enjoy this kind of activity.

As a naturally shy person in high school (and even now, to an extent), I was interested in the section about teacher’s expectations. I was fortunate that none of my teachers ever treated me differently because of my shyness. I never felt neglected or left out because I was really shy. I’m glad Williams brings up the fact that some teachers don’t want to wait for students to answer questions. Some kids need a few seconds to formulate their thoughts. These kids shouldn’t be ignored because a teacher isn’t comfortable with a little bit of silence.