Looking through my archive, I realized that I never completed the Lies ELA Teachers Tell series I started a while ago. I wrote about the five lies we tell our students, but I had a whole list of lies we tell ourselves and each other. Since the first series had gotten so much attention, I've decided to finish what I started.
All next week, come back here to read the 5 Lies ELA Teachers Tell Themselves (and Each Other).
In the meantime, catch up of the 5 Lies ELA Teachers Tell Their Students and some of the responses those posts got (if you know of other responses written on other blogs, please let me know. These are the only ones I could find.)
"The Five Paragraph Essay is a good form of writing."
(I still regret writing that the five paragraph form could make good scaffolding. People really latch onto the rationalization for teaching this dinosaur. I never should have said that. Why? Because, teachers rarely ever take the scaffolding away. They think that a more sophisticated form of writing will just magically appear. If you are using something as a form of scaffolding, then you need to teach the more complex skills. Period. So, just skip the ugly behometh and teach the more complex skills. I've never, ever taught the five paragraph form of writing, and my students write wonderfully. Teach them what paragraphs really are - see below. Teach them organization and beginnings, middles, and ends. Then you don't need the 5 paragraph form. I retract my previous statement. Death to the 5 Paragraph Essay!)
"You have to learn the rules before you can break them."
"There are 5-7 sentences in a paragraph."
"This book is VERY important to read."
(This post remains one of my favorite to this very day. Some people's reactions were priceless. You would have thought I killed Shakespeare and Dickens myself!)
Interesting to revisit this! And no, I don't hold you personally responsible for the "deaths"--you can't kill what's not dead.
Posted by: mama squirrel | July 22, 2006 at 08:19 AM
Can't wait to see the other lies. The 5-paragraph essay and 4-6 sentences per paragraph is something forced onto me from mentors and colleagues. When I first found out about these things, I felt like I didn't know what I was doing as a teacher, despite the fact my students had been successful writers. Using these guidelines has produced medicore writers who pass the state- required writing exam. The students could do better writing without such confinements.
Posted by: Kristine | July 22, 2006 at 11:20 PM
Ya know, I've always felt that way about the five-paragraph essay, ever since I was first forced to teach it. Who the hell sits down to write a five-paragraph essay, ever?
Ironically, I've been having to teach ESL students how on earth they could pass the NY Englsih Regents exam, which is entirely inappropriate for them (but that's yet another topic).
The way I've devised is teaching them a very simplistic FOUR-paragraph essay, and it seems to work. But I'd be deluding myself (not to mention my students) if I were to pretend this skill, which I spend up to a year teaching, were useful for anything but passing that one test, which they need to graduate.
Posted by: NYC Educator | July 23, 2006 at 01:25 PM