synthesis on the teaching of writing

Reading my articles as well as my groups wiki entries on the teaching of writing has been very interesting. I took the 431 class and in that class we focused on many of the same theories, however it was in a different context. In the writing center we focused on one on one instruction concerning topics or genres that we may know nothing about. Now, in this class we are focusing on teaching writing to an entire classroom of writers which brings to the surface different issues and problems and also different ways to apply the theories i had previous learned and the ones i am reading about now.

All of the articles i have read in my set have been entirely different, yet i can still see the connection. It is kind of like a big group of stars of information on writing that i need to examine and somehow link together to make a constellation that somehow makes sense and is useful. SO far its been kind of overwhelming to learn these new concepts but at the same time I'm grateful that i do not need to read all 16 articles and that my group members are pointing out the most important elements of each article, although Im sure that when it comes to writing my memorendum most of the information i put in it will come from the set of articles i have read, mostly because i feel more confident about them.

My favorite article so far was Jester's short article on the steps she takes as a writer. I feel these are important steps that are often overlooked becuase succesful writers usually take them for granted. By making these steps explicit to students i feel that they will become more confident writers becuase they know what factors proffesional writers focus on. I also think the article about Genre was interesting, but only becuase i learned so much about genre theory in my 431 class and already knew the importance of genre when teaching writing. I think if i hadn't been introduced to these theories that this article would not have meant much to me and would have been very confusing.