Blog #2 - In the Middle

Hello again Everyone,

Today I would like to talk a little about what Atwell has to say in Section 4 of her book, In the Middle: New Understandings about Writing, Reading, and Learning. Atwell begins the portion in section 4, Establishing Expectations, by saying that she has been teaching long enough know that a teacher shouldn't expect students' writings to be at the level of an adult. She says, "Although it would be nice some year to have perfect classes that intuited how to engage as writers and readers... it hasn't happened yet, and I'm not holding my breath."

Then, much to my suprise, Atwell extablishes an extensive list of expectations for writing that are hard even me, an adult and proficient writer, to grasp the breadth of. A few of the expectations are what I would consider to be reasonable for high school students: Find topics and purposes for your writing that matter to you; try new topics, purposes audiences, forms, and techniques; listen to, ask questions about, and comment on others' writings.

But I noticed that she a couple of expectations that seem pretty weighty for high school students. These include expectations such as: Produce at least three to five pages of rough draft each week; create a handbook of writing and reading minilessons, recorded chronologically, with a table of contents; keep an individual proofreading list that you check your writing against when you edit and proofread.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I feel that some of these are asking a lot of students. This would definitely be a blog that I would like to see replies to because I would like to see what the rest of you think on the matter.

Sam P.