Moving from Washington, DC to Texas was a huge transition in and of itself… But when you add the differences in the teaching content, it was even more drastic. In writing, the differences were most pronounced! In DC, our students wrote in the context of a reading passage; it was more of a response or a find details to support the conclusion that you have drawn. In Texas, on the other hand, students are asked to write about their own experiences and organize it in a one page-26-line paper. In DC, they may be given up to 4 pages to flesh out there response. You can easily see how MY mindset had to change in order to prepare my Texas students. What I relied heavily upon were graphic organizers to give students a checklist and help them remember the brainstorming and planning steps. It helped in the end because by the end of May, my students knew what elements to include in their writing to have a quality composition.
