CRAFT and Rubrics: Strong chapter 6

Strong argued that the way many writing assignments are assigned today in schools is as busywork, and that over time writing assignments are making students hate writing.  Strong also argued that the way writing assignments were written, as well as the stress put on multiple choice assessments, functioned to "construct thinking, not expand it." (95)  When I was in high school, I remember how almost all of my assessments for one history teacher were multiple choice assessments and short answer questions. When there was a writing assignment, it seemed to be all about regurgitating what the teacher wanted to hear. The point of class was to memorize names and dates, but no stress was put on how to synthesize or evaluate the significance of the names and dates.

Another history teacher of mine was quite the opposite, and instead relied on many different projects as well as writing assignments where we could choose the topic, as long as it was related to a certain era or theme in our unit. I strongly feel as though the aim of writing assignments and history or in any discipline should be to expand thinking rather than construct it.  The beauty of writing assignments is that students can come to conclusions about things themselves rather than being told what to think.
Another issue raised by Strong is how many writing assignments lack a "context" for students to think about.  The RAFT model of writing assignments (role, audience, format, topic) can be greatly improved by adding a contextual part to the equation.  This will eliminate a lot of guess work for students and answer the question of "Why am I doing this?"
Strong also suggests that teachers provide students with a rubric for their writing assignments.  Rather than having students stress about whether or not they are "doing this right,"  they will instead be focusing more on the content of their paper.  Additionally, students should be taught how to research.  This reminded me of the idea of teaching students to symbolically read.  Students know how to google, but they don't necessarily know how to research.  After skirting by through high school without being taught research skills, they go to college and get in trouble for plagiarizing wikipedia. I think that by teaching students how to research and by telling them exactly what we are looking for and how we are grading them for writing assignments, students will gain extra knowledge not only on the topic of the assignment, but also on how to research and think critically.  These are skills that can carry across disciplines and into the world.