University High School Reading  Writing Center
 
Writing centers attempt to produce better writers, not better writing, through a student-centered,
process-oriented approach, which chiefly means talking to writers about writing.

Purpose

The purpose of the University High School Reading Writing center is to promote literacy appreciation in all of our students and to encourage literacy staff development in our faculty.  We further wish to teach students to become independent thinkers, readers and writers who realize that attention to literacy skills will result in improvement.

We want students to
•  Overcome writing anxiety
•  Recognize the connection between reading and writing
•  Recognize and use "good reader" strategies
•  Read for enjoyment
•  Learn and practice specific good reader strategies such as questioning, predicting, connecting, and visualizing.
•  Enjoy the writing process
• Appreciate the usefulness and art of writing
•  Learn and practice specific writing processes such as brainstorming, idea generation, prewriting, drafting, orgaining, revising
•  Find their voices
•  Learn to craft a piece of writing based on its purpose and audience
•  Develop methods and ideas for revision
•  Learn proofreading techniques and standard editing symbols

We want teachers to
• Practice reading and writing strategies with their students and their content
• Learn how to begin, manage, and sustain a classroom library and a silent sustained reading program
• Integrate reading and writing strategy instruction across content areas
• Develop reflective practice by observing, participating in, and discussing whole class instruction in the RWC

Our Philosophy
Reading and writing skills are connected.  Students become better readers by reading and students become better writers by writing. 

On teaching writing . . .

    If you were taking photography class in order to learn how to take and develop your own landscapes what are some of the things you would expect to do in class? Would you read about Ansel Adams and then do worksheets about how to develop pictures? Would play a game matching his pictures with their correct titles? Would you complete a multiple choice test on which chemical solution to use to develop black and whites?  Maybe you would watch a movie about Ansel Adams? Would any of these make you a better landscape photographer?  Sure, learning about one of the preeminent landscape photographers of this century would be a boon to any photographer, but in our opinion, that is not how to learn to take pictures.  You learn to take pictures by taking them.  Experimenting with light, subject and craft will help a student photographer improve.  Hopefully if you were enrolled in such a class,  you would get to take pictures--you would have permission to experiement and experience. Maybe you would even get to experience developing them!

    Like budding photographers, beginning writers need to experience real writing tasks in order to become better writers.  Student writers need to be able to take risks with their writing without fearing punishment in the way of grades.  Student writers need to be enouraged to read like writers and see that reading as well as writing have real places in our everyday lives. Writing, real writing, is done for a variety of purposes and audiences and students need to recognize this in order to shape their own purposeful pieces.  Like budding landscape photographers, students need to be immersed in the experience of developing a piece of writing in a caring, collaborative community of writers. That is what the Writing Center offers the students of University High School.

Some beliefs about writing . . .

    We believe that teachers should write with their students and that we should all strive to develop a writing community within our classrooms and school.   We believe that effective teaching of writing happens across the curriculum and not just in language arts classes.  We believe that writers learn best by collaborating with other writers.  Writing, sharing, publishing, reflecting and rewriting are all aspects of the writing process that a writing community embraces.  The writing center promotes this kind of community and collaboration across the curriculum.  Whether it be collaborating with a writing tutor and conferencing about a draft, collaborating with a published author by reading his or her text as a model, or collaborating with a science and an English teacher to develop creative writing applications for their common students, we are here to work with the teachers and students to improve and invest in student writers.

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Last Updated 4/15/05
Created by:  Lee Ann Spillane

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