Entry #2

When I was in school, I was taught in very traditional writing classes.  As Freeman & Freeman (2004) state, "in many traditional classes, the form of the writing becomes much more important than the content".  I definitely think this is the view a majority of my teachers took towards teaching writing.

In elementary school, I was given a weekly spelling list and would memorize the words, but did not really learn about the patterns of words until I had to teach them to my students.  This also happened with grammar lessons when I was given worksheets covering a variety of grammar topics.  These worksheets didn't work very well because to this day I am continually learning the why and how for grammar techniques instead of just relying on the old adage, "because it sounds correct".  Handwriting lessons were also part of my traditional writing classroom experience.  We would continually practice forming the letters and I even received a grade on my report card for handwriting.  

I mainly remember my high school writing classes where the teacher would provide the prompts or assignments that we were to respond to in class.  Five paragraph essays were the norm, but I don't remember specifically being taught how to organize the paper, other than information about writing an introduction and the conclusion. I don't remember being allowed to choose my topics or the medium for writing (for example: create a newspaper article, cartoon, advertisement, etc.) to convey my ideas, which would have been such a welcomed departure from the traditional essay.