Chapter 6-Best Practices

Does anyone else remember the day when you hated to do any kind of prewriting or planning??? I DO!!!! I never got into planning in school. I didn't see the point, we were never really taught how to do it, it seemed like a waste of time, and we rarely used our prewriting and rough drafts to compose any finalized work. So, when I saw that we had to read a whole chapter on planning out writing in the classroom, I was less than thrilled and enticed. However, as I read the chapter, I began to understand why I had so many issues with planning and why I never liked it.
In the chapter, I was one of the "Many developing writers that minimize the role of planning in their writing." I would sit at a table, start writing, and go from thre, something known as "knowledge telling". Thus, my papers at times were jumbled up, jumpy, and constructed with poor grammar. I had never learned the importance of planning and thus, it did not reflect in my work.
Chapter 10 gives some really nice methods for teaching the process, role, and importance of planning so that students understand it's value. It lists three interventions of prewriting, or generating ideas around a topic; inquiry, or the use of questioning, observation, etc. the generate knowledge about a topic and strategy instruction, or explicit teaching of the process of planning, and revision.
Prewriting and inquiry are more student led and in a way allows students to hopefully come to their own understandings about the writing process. When observed in a classroom, both practices showed a positive effect of .32.
Strategy instruction is teacher driven and shows students the important parts of planning and revising. It is used to ensure mastery of the skills learned in the process and is modeled many times by a teacher. This direct instruction based approach showed a positive effect of 1.03. So, one would discern that a combination of both types would work well for students.
The last thing I would like to comment on is the fact that these authors picked up on why students did not like planning. The topics were meaningless, so students put no effort forth, prewriting wasn't praised or considered a major part of a writing piece, and children saw few results, especially if their work went unpublished. The teacher didn't really seem to value planning, so why would the students? Especially if there really wasn't any reason. The book suggests praising the prewriting and revision process and encouraging students to take different points of view. That way, they can see how planning can better help them get their point acoss.