Keeslers Writing World

I really liked the idea that Donald M. Murray is talking about in his article. After reading the articile a lot of the points made a lot of sense to me. I really do think that writing does find it's own meaning. Often times you sit down to write a paper and have an idea of what you want the paper to say, but then for some reason you find yourself writing and expanding on other things that you had not considered previously. It's kinda like the paper work has it's own mind and knows what it needs to become.
I also really liked his idea of writing, reading, collecting, and connecting all relate. I know that personally I believe that writing and reading affect each other very strongly. By reading great works I think your own writing will improve. I also think that it helps you notice the relationship between these four and be able to use them better. Collecting idea's and connecting them together is an important part of writing. So how does one teach students to do these things? I think repetion and demonstration are the best teachers in writing. By continually writing and reading other works one can begin to see what good writing should or can look like.
In my own classroom I would use journals as a way of repetition. I know that some people don't like the journal approach, but I really believe it helps your writing greatly. I would even consider doing it in a blog for like this. I think that the importance with the journal method though is that you allow your students some freedom to write about what is on their mind, but still give them a way to connect their ideas to the curriculum. This is where the demonstration of great writing would come in. I would ask them to tie their journal entries to the literature that we are reading at the time.
As for the use of the actual prewriting process. I would leave that up to the individual student. I would of course teach them various prewriting techniques and how they can be useful, but in the end if they choose to use them would be their decision.