As an educator this is an issue that distresses me almost daily. We now live in a time of texting, tweeting and quick social media blurbs that do not conform to any grammar or spelling rules. Some days as I watch my students create a new piece of writing, I often wonder what writing will be like in ten years, or actually in as little as five years.
The new rules of writing workshop is to allow children to create their stories without thinking about grammar or mechanics. I completely agree that it is important to not stagnate creative thoughts, however, it makes it extremely difficult to have them go back and fix these problems. How can we expect them to do this when instruction hardly ever focuses on this?! Yes, we do support our classes with some instruction on sentence structure, capitals and punctuation. Unfortunately, as a society we put less emphasis on these structures. But these same students will be expected to provide high quality writing assignments in a college course somewhere down the road. So how do we as educators turn this around? We embrace new programs that embellish creativity while just touching on good writing. It is our job to formulate instruction so that children can acquire grammar and mechanics skills while focusing on the creative aspect of writing.
I like the way we can express ourselves in society and not hold back feelings, opinions, etc. This will continue to be predominant as we go through this century. We are now able to express ourselves through so many different channels that people everywhere can express their feelings through a blog, a Pinterest site and a Facebook post. This is our new world of immediate gratification and expression that our children are learning within.
So everyday I will continue to struggle with the death of grammar while embracing new ideals and leaning new ways to express ourselves in this fast paced, info rich society.
Elaine Gallagher
Nice post
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