What She Wrote

I definitely don't think of myself as a writer, even though I think I do a pretty good job when I do write.  I don't consider myself a writer mainly because pretty much the only thing I write for myself is the grocery list and the super rare Facebook comment or status update.  I used to keep a journal sporadically but when I'd go back to read my entries later, I ripped out the ones I thought were embarrassing and proceeded to place them in the nearest trash receptacle.   I found them embarrassing because I usually only wrote when  I had something to rant about.  Other than that, I did write a few notes back and forth to some of my friends and letters to my cousin who lives in Texas, and play MASH with my buddies, but I think that's about it for recreational writing as a kid.

I like to express my ideas verbally, if I have the chance.  Most people think I'm not a big talker, but my friends and family will tell you otherwise.  I've found that unless there's something that really just gets to me, I don't speak up until I'm with people I know well.  I consider myself lucky that I know people who will listen to all the ideas I have all day while I'm at school.  While I'm holding my comments in, I often draw pictures-  not necessarily about the ideas that I'm having, but what's being said definitely has an impact on the mood of my doodles.  It helps me keep things organized in my head, but a lot of teachers think I'm not paying attention when I doodle.  I suspect that I lost points on required notes and assignments in certain because there were doodles all over the margins.  Drawing helps me organize my thoughts.

My favorite writing assignment ever was in the fourth grade.  We were given a dinosaur to research and write a one page report on, complete with illustration.  I got to write about Ouranosaurus, which was cool, because I was (and still am) pretty knowledgeable about different kinds of dinos but didn't know a lot about Ouranosaurus. I'm pretty much a dinosaur fangirl if you didn't know by now :) Later, I liked research papers okay, whether they were informative or persuasive, as long as I got to choose a cool topic.  I've never liked writing short stories.  It doesn't matter if I try to write fictional stories, or stories from my own experience, I'm bad at them and I know it.  If you want to hear my stories, ask me in person and I'll gladly tell them to you.

I want students to be exposed to a little bit of scientific writing, without overwhelming them.  I think that I'd like students to write two research papers for the year in my class, if I teach high school.  I think there's valuable skills that happens during the writing process, and I'd love to really spend a lot of time developing those skills the first paper and giving students a chance to use them for the second.  I don't feel that these papers need to be more than three pages or so, and I remember on longer papers trying to just take up space.  I also want to do some less formal writing in the form of quick writes, RAFT prompts, etc for the students who don't thrive on research based writing.