Williams pg 42-97

Well I’m going into this assignment very frustrated. I have just spent a good portion of today trying to get my son to write a reading journal. His assignment is to write 8 sentences about the book that he has spent the prior week reading. After trying to get him to tell me about the book, I realize that he has not read the book or if he has he has only skimmed over the pages of the book without really paying attention to the content. I find myself doing the latter at times and will go back over the page or the last couple of pages that I had not paid attention to. I now have to decide whether to insist that he reads the book that he has started or to let him choose another book that he finds more interesting. I am leaning toward the latter. My goal is to get him to become a more attentive reader who is able to respond to what he has read first verbally and then in writing.
Williams discusses different approaches that different teachers use in writing classes. It seems as though Williams feels that writing just for the sake of writing is an effort that is despised by students and only used as busy work for the children to keep them quiet.
Punctuation versus content and nary to two shall meet. No but seriously, Williams’ concern about “9 years of study for a subject that is not only easy but just marginally related to what writing is about” (44) is a valid one. Why is there such an emphasis on perfecting substandard content? Shouldn’t the focus be more on content than grammar? If the student is receiving a grade based on his grammar rather than the actual content, his focus will be more on whether the paper is grammatically correct rather than focusing on whether the content is worth reading. What is the answer to this perplexing dilemma? Maybe if the students were free to respond in writing form without fear of a bad grade because their grammar wasn’t the sole or major focus, the content of the paper would be more developed. Opening up reading discussions which may create a little noise in the classroom may spark the students’ interest more than quietly writing about something they probably don’t care about. By asking students to respond honestly and openly about their reading, the teacher may open up the classroom to some negativity but that is worth the possibility of also opening the student’s minds to other aspects of the reading that they may not have realized or thought about.
I am experimenting with the reading journals with my son. I have allowed him to switch books but instead of responding at the end of the week about what he has read I am having him respond verbally and in writing each night at the end of the reading. This ensures that he has actually read and understood the reading while at the same time he is cutting the time spent of the writing at the end of the week to hopefully turn the writing into a less onerous task.