Week 10

"What we don't consider is the most significant "time on task" of all, what students choose to do beyond the walls of the school." The article focuses a lot how writing develops and how much goes into a student's experience with writing. The concept of students focusing on writing outside of school really stood out to me. I know from personal experience that I hardly ever, if ever, write unless I'm assigned to do so for class. For as long as I can remember writing has been something that seems more like homework than it seems like something enjoyable. I've always dreaded writing. However, having a nephew and younger cousins I can see that younger children really do like writing. I mean my mom has kept writings from my earlier years of school and it doesn't seem like I hated it so much then. It's interesting that most students experience this sort of shift from enjoying writing and not being able to do it enough to growing to hate it and dreading to ever to do. I really think that this is partially due to the limitations that are often put on students writings. Younger kids are typically encouraged to just write about anything they want, whereas as students get older there are more limitations on what they can and can't write. Overall from this reading I was able to see the importance of not making students write or forcing them to write about specific topics.