Strategies and Models to facilitate structured writing:

In chapter three of Writing in the content areas, Amy Benjamin offers various representations, proposals and forms to help the students to be specific and provide details. Often in the papers, students produce unsupported generalities. Benjamin beautifully focuses on the root cause and lists the generality words that can be replaced into specific components to produce writing that is rich in details. I really like the idea of listing the general words, as sometimes in our own paper, we feel that we don’t have anything to talk about. By showing the relationship between generalities and specifics, it helps the student to build a range from specifics to general and vice versa.

Listing prepositional phrases in the classroom is a wonderful approach. It facilitates the students to support and provide details in their writing. By Making a connection with the time and place help the students to make an airtight writing piece. Facts and figures also refine the writing piece not only economically but demographically.

This chapter definitely is information packed in terms of extracting the most out of the students in their writing assignments. Providing them with exact words not only helps them to filter the unnecessary components in their writing, but also improve it by replacing them with specific details. I adore the idea of spelling list as well. It is true that some of the technical terms are not common in daily life conversations. To have them on the board help the student to memorize the spelling and once they get used to of it, it can be replaced with the new words .

This technique is also useful in lower grades. As in the first and second grade class, I love the idea of word wall in the classroom. It assists to not only introduce the student with new words but also helps them to get familiarize with it while doing their writing workshops. Every week the students get tested on these spelling words. It constructs the vocabulary as well as their practice in the writing.