Article review Let Students Write Their Masterpiece"

At first, Steve Gardiner believes that long term project of what students freely choose

will reveals a curiosity and sense of ownership that can lead them to produce their best in their

work. Long term project that this article mean is the writing that based on students ideas. For

example, writing the story with their own ideas of setting, plot, or characters which lead them to

always go back to their project to make important decisions for the progress of their masterpiece.

He believes that if the students have a freedom to freely choose their theme and topic, the

students will be more engage and curious about their own writing. Also, the other reason is that

Gardiner wanted to change the way of writing or reading project like it used to, where the teacher

will give a recommendation books or reading to the students and let them choose and develop the

plot and setting based on the book they read. Supported with what Vygotski says that "student is

most effective as a writer when the student is encouraged to write a topic that intrinsically

understandable to him and engages his emotions and most of all encourage him to express his

interior world in words." (70) Gardener try to make his student engage more to their writing

project within their own decision which they can put their own emotion and thought to their

writing without thinking about the original author of one book or story, because it is their

masterpiece.

Above all, I think Steve Gardener did a great job with that. But there is one thing that

makes me think if I will apply this method in my classroom. I am thinking how if one of my

students does not like writing or linguistic is not their interest? How if they more easy to learn or

start something if there is a pattern in the beginning that can lead them to continue it, or just

follow the pattern. I think we also need to be careful because sometimes we generalize the way

we treat our student. In other words, we need to think that not all our students have an intelligent
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in linguistic. Therefore, I think it will be better if I find out what is my student' interest, or in the

beginning I give an options, either they want to choose the book by themselves and develop the

by themselves or they want to make it by their own.

Furthermore, this article personally open my mind about the process or the way I want to

achieve the objectives of my lesson plan. It is true and it is important as a teacher I need to be

creative. To be creative to help students reveals something that been hiding from our student' life

through the way I teach my students. Also, reminds me about the mandate for education in the

Truth that I read in Fennemas article that we need to help our student guide them through

education. In other words, we need to teach them and help them to understand that they are

Imago Dei created to be creative, free, and unique in their own way. For example, I might have

the same lesson plan with the other grades about writing, but the thing is what will I do to make

them reach the objectives of the lessons. Not only teach about that, but touch the students heart

and their life through what they do in my class.

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References

Fennema, J. (2015). Macro-Curriculum. Education in-the-Truth,5-26.

Gardiner, S. (2014). Let Students Write Their Masterpiece. Educational Leadership, 71(7). 67-

70.