Response to Murray Chapter 6

This chapter was very useful in giving me ideas for short writing prompts and activities that my students could do. I think that if I am going to give my students writing prompts, each prompt should be different and interesting to the students so that I am able to keep their attention. Also, an idea that really resonated with me was the trail. It can be hard for the writer to make his/her ideas comprehensible to all readers and audiences. Thus, taking the time to show the writer how to take a lead idea of their paper and write at least four questions that their writing will have to answer in order for the reader to get the main idea can be very useful in showing organization and proper transitions. I think I really liked this passage out of the chapter because last week when we did our revising workshop, I asked my reviser, to help me brainstorm ideas on how to fix my flow and organizational problems. I knew that my paper was choppy, but I didn't know how to fix it on my own. Therefore, I think taking the time to show students what is necessary in organization and details to make their paper more comprehensible to the reader can be very useful. As bad as it is, it can be easy to forget about the audience when writing a paper because the writer knows the details of the story better than anyone, so it can be easy to forget that sometimes we will write for people who do not know much about the topic.

Also, I had never thought that the classroom environment could hinder or help writing. It makes sense that the classroom environment should be one that evokes writing from each student. Like we discussed in class, writing is very personal, so if we are going to ask our students to write, the environment of the classroom should be inviting so each student can feel comfortable writing and sharing their thoughts.