The writing process is an important part of an integrated language arts classroom as required by the Ohio State Department of Education curriculum. Skills like usage, spelling, and punctuation should not be isolated as meaningless drill activities but are best learned in a communication context where reading, writing, speaking, listening, viewing, and thinking are all interrelated. Whole language activities involve students in meaningful writing experiences that are published or shared with a real audience. Writing can be a useful tool for learning any content area. In other words, students can use writing to understand social studies, math, science, health, or literature.
Writing can be a more active way of learning content than passive listening or reading.
Likewise, this class will use writing as a means for you to learn about teaching. You will write journal entries in response to what we do and what you read. These entries will help you to consider what you are learning in this course and how you might apply this information to your own classroom in the future. This class will consider both the theory and the practice of teaching writing. Developing a theory of composition is important to a language arts teacher because every teaching practice represents an implicit theory about language learning.