The writing assignments I particularly enjoyed during high school were poetry during 12th grade English. I loved reading but hated reading assignments because they involved writing. I always did well in English but never enjoyed it until the class taught by Mrs. Potter. Our class was used as a broadcast class so we were televised and had to speak into microphones when making comments. I had never written poetry before and was very intimidated with the idea. As we began to learn structure and rules for various poetic forms I gradually started to think I might actually be able to do it. One of the poems I wrote won a poetry contest that year.
The writing assignments I disliked were doing mechanical things with language such as diagramming sentences. Had I paid more attention those exercises might have helped in learning a foreign language but I found them to be tedious. The motivation is different with analyzing structure of something you are learning instead of something you already know how to do. With learning to speak French and with writing poetry, they were things I did not yet know which were challenging to learn; knowing the mechanics was helpful in figuring out what to do. With diagramming sentences in English, the exercise did not seem helpful since I already knew how to use proper grammar. I did not see the need to learn the mechanics of something which was automatic.
This week's reading talked about doing composition in math classes at the same level as with other subjects. I had not thought of having a composition book or writing papers as part of learning math. I think doing so would be an excellent way to give students more of a voice in what they are learning. Too often students remain silent during lectures and then work on homework without much participation in discussion. One way to reinforce learning is to teach. Writing gives the opportunity to teach through written explanation. As students develop communication skills through writing, they will become able to explain math to someone who is a "non-math" person. This will serve them well and us one day when they are writing text books.
