Challenges in Preparing Young Writers

In reading the article they explain the types of challenges and differences that people encounter from the writing that they were taught in school compared to the writing that they do now. The people who wrote the blog discussed how they asked people in their lives to show some examples of their writing. Although they were impressed with the amount of variety they did notice a common problem. All of the writing was different from what these writers were previously taught in school. In the blog they stated that a challenge in teaching students the correct and effective writing was far different from the type of writing they used. They noticed that the samples that were collected were very different from the types of samples that these teachers taught their students in school and that many of the students would not be able to list this much variety. That brings awareness to the fact that students are not nearly taught enough variety of writing in school as they should have and thus sets them up for failure beyond the K-12 level. The concerns that come with that are that even if teachers want to teach students the correct and effective way to write, the standardized testing within schools does not allow the teachers to do so. Teachers often how to “teach the test” rather than teaching their student curriculum that is going to help them succeed beyond the testing. to be an effective writing teacher it is necessary that we encourage and develop diversity within the classroom and within their writing. In the blog it states that in order for children to be effective in writing it is our duty to give them opportunities to “write for real audiences in authentic genres.” Doing this as well as moving away from writing that is mainly centered around the test will allow students to have the proper tools and skills to be successful at the collegiate level and beyond and it is our duty as future teachers to try to enforce this among our students.