Susan O'Hanian - Common Core fulfillment mania strikes again, with a lesson on informative/expository writing that tries to make eight-year-olds sound like bankers.
Warning: They may forever lose their voices in the process.
We're told that this lesson satisfies this Common Core Standard.
There's a handout where kids can check off that they have used these words (Tell students that linking/transition words can be used to tie all their paragraphs together. This helps keep the flow for readers. Share with students that linking/transition words are a lot like using glue. Using linking/transition words to connect ideas is a Review Focus Skill. . . .
List of Linking/Transition Words
To Show Order
(Temporal Words)
after
before
during
first
following
next
second
since
then
third
while
To Add Information:
additionally
along with
also
another
as well
besides
finally
for example
for instance
furthermore
in addition
To Indicate a Purpose or Reason
in hope that
in order to
so that
with this in mind
because
To Conclude:
all in all
as a result
finally
in conclusion
in summary
in brief
therefore
lastly
to sum up
overall
It is perverse to encourage eight-year-olds to write this way. I just turned in a 3,750 word essay for English Journal. I didn't use a single one of these words. This is not how writers writer. It may well be how bankers write, but I think it's worse than misguided to foist this on to third graders. Third graders have a wonderful sense of voice, and to deliberately set out to stifle this voice, to bury it in formalism, is worse than a mistake: it's a crime.
2 comments:
I am not a fan of everything that goes on in classrooms in the name of education- here or (or in any other country that i am familiar with). However, I take issue with the idea that this is how bankers write. Students MUST learn how to properly use these transition words. I am not a native speaker of English. However, I will say that I have a much better command of the language (speech and writing) than many (MOST!) of my (college) students who cannot write a one- page essay without spelling and grammar mistakes. I am grading international studies papers -- on the last day of my so-called Spring Break. It should not be my job to tell them "Which, Sudan's populous chose to not engage in."
As for not using any of these word in submitting to an English journal. I cannot say anything about that not knowing the content or context. I can say, as a general rule, that you need some sort of basic knowledge, a scaffold if you will, to build on before you start creating more interesting language out of existing language. You cannot do that if you are not competent in the basics.
And that is all I have to say about that. I even started that sentence with "And"...
Prescriptivists often forget that language has only 2 real rather than assigned values: facilitating thought, and interpersonal communication.
Spelling and grammar are almost entirely arbitrary (there's some evidence that basic grammar is inbuilt). Indeed, until well into the 19th c., orthography didn't exist at all in the gallimaufry creole that is English, and barely existed elsewhere.
So I, a psychologist and pentaglot, categorise spelling and grammar as class-marker skills, like knowing which fork to use at a high-society dinner, not production-of-knowledge skills that are (still, we can hope) the core purpose of academia.
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