January 12th - Teaching Writing Across the Curriculum

January 12^th, 2015

Reflection – Peterson, Atwell

An interesting theme that came up in both of the readings this week was the idea that all teachers should aim “to make sure that our students learn to communicate through writing” (Peterson, 2). Peterson discusses the challenges that teachers face in trying to find time to teach writing within specific content areas. I agree with her belief that writing should be taught within each and every content area. The burden of teaching writing should not fall solely on teachers of English and language arts. These teachers have their own curriculum expectations to meet, and on top of that, they are really only able to teach writing in relation to one content area: English.

It is unfair to assign the task of teaching writing solely to English teachers, because students need to learn how to write according to the conventions of various genres across different content areas. In order to get this point across, Peterson uses the example of learning how to write something like a lab report in science. This is of course a genre of writing that is essential to writing in the sciences, but also a genre that would never be found in an English course. The point is that the English teacher should not be responsible for teaching writing in general, as if writing were a singular attainable skill.