Why Writing is Important to Learning and Communication in History.

Writing within History is an important foundation for a student's ability to learn and communicate ideas. All students should have an understanding of the importance of reading, reflecting upon, and writing about past events. An easy way to explain the importance of writing within History can be drawn to the process of how history is recorded. Simply put in order for people to accurately evaluate a point in time any individual recording new information should communicate their understanding of the event so that others can clearly grasp the message the writer wanted to promote. Just as our forefathers communicated their understanding of their time and place in history so to should any student learning within the field of History. 

One method of practicing the skills of writing and communicating understanding is to use the writing process. This approach within the content area of Social Studies is promoted by Chapman, Hobbel, and Alvarado's Real-Time Teaching: A Social Justice Approach as a Base for Teaching Writing.This article deals with writing within a content area for the sake of understanding the material more and developing students’ reflective writing skills. This is done under the lens of social injustice: “A social justice approach to writing fosters an awareness of societal challenges that affect students’ families, communities, and the larger society.” The three main topics discussed were concepts of beauty, poverty, and slave trafficking. Students were asked to write about how these topics affected 1. themselves and their family, 2. their community, and 3. the world. After the students created the drafts regarding the topic and its effect on the three expected elements (“Me, My Community, and the World”), students were asked to peer review each other’s work. Through this reflective process and the follow up critique students were able to develop their writing skills while discussing fascinating issue. According to Sharron Kane these students would have informally completed all four steps of the writing process. (p.190) By rough drafting or brainstorming ideas students would have completed the planning process. By allowing peers to review their work and reflecting on their critiques students are drafting and revising. By fixing the flaws address by their peers students are editing their work. Finally by turning in their work to the teacher students are “publishing” their reflections on the given subject matter.

To perform this writing approach I would give my students a social injustice prompt like slavery, segregation, or lack of provisions (food and water). They would then, like the article suggests, reflect on how these topics impact the individual, community, and world within the given time frame. By reflecting on the social justice aspect of history in this manor the events of the past are not just topical, point in time occurrences, but dynamic events that have personal, local, and global repercussions. 

Literary Observations #1

I have only been student teaching for a week now and more than a few times students have asked me to define words for them. Words like decimate, neutrality, and ecology are examples of some of the words these students have asked me about. Because not all students have the same level of understanding of vocabulary there will be words that some students do not understand. This problem can be fixed by implementing a word wall into my future classroom. The purpose of a word wall is to build student vocabulary. According to one of the articles I read for learning module 6 students can create their own word walls by analyzing texts and recording any words they are unfamiliar with or words that clearly stood out as vocabulary not often used outside of the content area. Students can then label their selected words under one of the following levels; 
Level 1: I have never seen this word. 
Level 2: I think I have seen this word, but I don't know what it means. 
Level 3: I have seen this word, and it has something to do with.... 
Level 4: I know this word. I can use it in my speaking, reading, writing, and listening. 
By allowing my students to use metacognition to evaluate their understanding of vocabulary I can build up their vocabulary. 

The next step to this process is very important. My students need to survey these words using these questions: How useful is the word? 
Can you use the word in different situations or contexts? 
Is the word used frequently?
Do you think the word can appear in different texts? 
Is the word's meaning easy to explain in everyday language?
Does the word refer to something concrete or abstract? 
Does the word have multiple meanings? 
Does the word have a prefix, suffix, or identifiable root? 
I found this questioning process easy for every student to answer and it also encourages higher level thinking as it requires transfer. One useful approach the book promotes that is also utilized within the article is to make students aware of the prefixes and suffixes in content areas.(158) Prefixes like pre- and post- are used frequently outside of the content area, but hemi-, dem- and others would need to be practiced to increase their content vocabulary. 
Ultimately I need to implement a word wall, but limit the word wall to simple terms. Any word that a student does not understand should be added to the wall and put through this process. My current teacher uses her word wall not only for terms like iron curtain and cold war, but for words like containment and isolation. By taking that next step of allowing students to add to the word wall I can really make a difference in their literary understanding.