Warm Up #2

Here are the questions:

1. What kinds of reading and writing did you see students doing in school? Why do you think Rose chose these assignments?

2. What “rules and regulations” did students appear to be following as they read and wrote? In light of the students’ overall schooling experiences, did these seem useful or not? Speculate about how they might have influenced students’ literacy development.


1) I found that the students that Rose describes in his anecdotes usually were the ones who were pulled out of the regular reading and writing classes. These regular classes catered strongly to standardized testing and the breakdown of the components within reading and writings such as circling the correct verb forms, picking out the parts of speech, filling in the blanks within sentences, etc. When Rose pulled his students out, he started with the basics of simply getting them interested in writing again and took a completely backwards approach to how he was influencing them to write. He allowed them to express themselves creatively and worrying about grammar, spelling, and syntax after they were finished simply conveying their thoughts. He found through this that many of the students who had been labeled as unable to string coherent sentence together could truly express themselves with a little extra time and attention.
2) I think the students had many rules and regulations to follow, they learned in one specific way and if they were not successful in that way they were labeled as outsider s to the rest of the class and placed in special categories. The rules placed on students that Rose was not working with seemed to have been rules that limited the students he had a chance to be one on one with. Once they were allowed to write about pictures, feelings, their own thoughts, then their creativity and ability began to shine rather than relying on a structured curriculum in which the y felt so lost. I think that strict classroom regulations that pertained to the mastery of complex items before the writing process even began limited these students and pushed their progress even further away from their grasp. Especially once these students were labeled, they knew it, and felt like they were separated form the group at large which in turn led them down the spiraling path of either believing their label or succumbing to, both a sever inhabitant on their later literary progress.