Listeners vs Thinkers

I have had the opportunity to see a lot of writing in my classroom since it is an upper level classroom they normally have a written portion to most of their assignments. We do not have a formal structure on how to teach writing in our classroom rather it seems that the room is run by trial and error. Our teacher tells the students to get out paper and to write about the topic. Once they have written about the topic they are allowed to share their assignment, turn it in, and never look at the paper again. Recently our students have been working on this project called Calberry where they had to work through the entire writing process from outline to final product. This could have been a great learning experience had the teacher used mini lessons to help the student’s structure and learn about writing. What our teacher and sub did however was tell the students what they did wrong and fixed every mistake the student made on their paper, the students went back to their desk and went on to the next step. I do not like the style of teaching writing where the teacher makes all of the corrections for the student and hopes he/she learns by looking at the corrections, at this point we are creating listeners instead of thinkers.

What I mean when I say we are creating listeners instead of thinkers is that by telling a student what to do their entire writing career they are not thinking on their own. I can best explain this concept by using a sports analogy. (sorry for you non sports fans) When you are at hockey practice the coach of the team can show you a general concept and let the players figure out the specifics with guided help when needed. The other option is that the coach can yell, “Pass the puck to Katie, Katie pass the puck to Kelly, Kelly shoot the puck” soon the players are going to stop thinking and just listen to what the coach has to say all the time. However once you get into a stadium with 75,000 screaming fans the players on the ice no longer can hear the coach and they do not know what to do because they haven’t thought on their own before.

What I want to do as a teacher is get my students to think on their own and interject when they need help or cannot solve the problem on their own.