a study by graham and harris (2005) was of particular interest to me because i love writing. it's one of my favorite subjects to teach--especially since i teach 5th grade, wherein the topics and abilities of my students are as various and multitudinous as the personalities in my classroom.
we use the columbia writing program at my school, so it was nice to see that they were involved in the study. what sparked my interest was the fact that the researchers chose handwriting and spelling as areas of focus to help struggling writers. one of the strengths of the columbia program is that students choose self-selected topics to write about, therefore creating "authentic" published pieces. while this is a more genuine approach, it tends to relegate conventions, such as spelling and handwriting to a secondary or tertiary level of importance. students are encouraged to learn from mentor texts and mentor authors--the real experts--but these authors sometimes use conventions in a somewhat unconventional way.
a while back we had a debate at my school about sentence fragments. open court teaches students to stay away from using them (even my grammar check politely underlines my fragments with a green squiggly line!), yet professional authors use them all the time. who's the real authority? according to one of our trainers, isoke, the essential question is, "good technicians or good craftsmen, which is our goal?"
the answer "good craftsmen" seems obvious, but that's not to discount the importance of knowing the rules and technicalities of the english language--we must explicitly teach them--but isoke says we must not be afraid to allow "playfulness with our language system." fragments (and maybe invented--intentional or otherwise--spellings) are "playful," and they're found everywhere in good writing. according to isoke, "it is the
why they chose to [use fragments] that we must teach our students." in other words, if we show our students mentor texts that include sentence fragments, we can gird them with a rationale for using them. how empowering is that?
this excerpt from sandra cisneros' "geraldo no last name" seems germane:
she met him at a dance. pretty too, and young. said he worked in a restaurant, but she can't remember which one. that's all. green pants and saturday shirt. geraldo. that's what he told her.i count four "fragments" by oc standards, buy isoke would argue--and i would agree--that cisneros "knows more about our language system--not less." she is actually "using more and making more of the rules...--not less."
