ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS RESOURCES

Yes. Teachers are encouraged to use a variety of types of writing for many different purposes in several contexts to help students grow as writers. Improved student writing is a major goal of any writing across the curriculum program, so students should not be limited to informational writing in the classroom simply because it is the focus of the tenth grade writing test. Students need to be exposed to a variety of writing opportunities to develop confidence and competence that will extend beyond the state writing assessment as well as support student performance on it.

Although writing is often divided into genres (such as narrative, argumentative, informative and so forth), it is important to remember that these genres are not mutually exclusive and that conventions of effective writing can cross the arbitrary lines dividing them. To put it simply, students grow as writers when they have the opportunity to practice many types of writing in a supportive environment. The North Carolina Standard Course of Study was designed with the belief that all strands of the curriculum work together to support each other, and the same is true in writing instruction. Teachers help students learn about informational writing, and all other kinds of writing, by creating a variety of writing assignments that vary in purpose, audience, structure, and content.

Students need to be encouraged to make meaningful choices about form, voice and organization in their writing. This can only happen when they are given a variety of experiences writing for different purposes, audiences, and contexts. When teachers rely solely on one form for writing assignments, students may begin to feel that their choices do not matter. In a related example, Pirie (1997) comments on the potentially formulaic five-paragraph essay and writes,

What does the five-paragraph essay teach about writing? It teaches that there are rules, and that those rules take the shape of a preordained form, like a cookie-cutter into which we can pour ideas and expect them to come out well-shaped. In effect, the student is told, "You don't have to worry about finding a form for your ideas; here's one already made for you." This kind of instruction sends a perversely mixed message. On the one hand, it makes structure all important, because students will be judged on how well they have mastered the form. On the other hand, it implies that structure can't be very important: it clearly doesn't have any inherent relationship to ideas, since just about any idea can be stuffed into the same form. (p. 76)

General conventions of effective writing can be applied across writing assignments, even those that seem very different. For example, students can learn to make rhetorical decisions about "voice" whether they are composing a childhood memory essay, budget request from a day care, lab report, Civil Rights protest song, biography of Mozart, or explanation of how to repair a bike derailleur. Regardless of the nature of the assignment, the student is learning to make significant choices about how to achieve a particular effect through the use of an appropriate writing voice.

Example In Masonry I, students write a series of instructions for performing a masonry task. Through peer review and informal teacher conferencing, they learn how to add relevant details and elaboration to the instructions to make them clear and complete.

Example In Visual Arts III, students share the work they have done by creating a web page modeled after an online museum tour. They use digital photography to capture images of their creations, design a website to present the tour, and write a brief paragraph about each piece which captures the essence of the work and its connection to the exhibit's focus.

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