For some writers, organizing their thoughts in any class across the curriculum is a most perplexing and sometimes even kind of scary chore! With the volumes of the research available during the recent decade devoted to the functioning of the brain, is it possible that educators can teach without going back to graduate school for an advanced degree in neuroscience? The answer is of course yes. As a practical example of applying the research, here is a model that teachers can employ designed to help students find order in their brainstormed chaos by actively processing work in both their visual and kinesthetic realms.
In this article, innovative brain-based ideas will be explored that can help bright, advanced or gifted and talented students gain some fresh perspectives by using higher-order thinking skills and abstract thinking on how to write in multiple styles and genres – including expository essays, narratives, creative, poetry, persuasive, literary analysis, cause and effect and many others.
How a Webbing Technique Applies to Expository Writing
As background to this series, let’s first ask ourselves what’s really one of the most important things we do as teachers? Human intelligence author Tony Buzan thinks that it is helping students to see and understand the cognitive connections, or links among their subjects and in their lives. (Buzan, 1984) If that is the case, then what is the one connecting activity that can be planned into each and every subject? It's writing! Opportunities exist every day to include reading and writing activities in every class and in every subject. This process shows how teachers can use a hands-on webbing technique for connecting and organizing students’ thoughts that can be used for any kind of writing activity in all of our classes from grades one and up!
In every class, from 7th Grade Art Class to AP English Literature, how can writing help our gifted and advanced students become better thinkers in the new Millennium? To address this question, let’s first ask what’s different about the students of the new Millennium. Colleges and academic issues are becoming more demanding. We are teaching our students lessons about jobs that have not even been thought of yet. Standards and expectations are no longer local, but based on global standards of excellence! What does this mean for today's teacher? Based on an inspection of recent brain research on how students learn, we have an opportunity for some new ways of thinking about teaching and learning in the new Millennium based on some new connections!
While this method works in classrooms across the curriculum, as a clear and practical example we will first explore how the webbing technique applies to expository writing in the next installment of the Hands-On Process-Writing articles in Suite101.
