Mitton "Now That You Go to School" by Geri

I read this article over and over.  I think my problem is that this piece is pulled out of something more complete.  This is about three types of writing, transactional, which I equate to the famous words in Dragnet, "Just the facts mam".  Expressive is what it sounds like. Expressive writing expresses the feelings or relays some personal information about the person writing it (voice?).  Poetic is an expressive type of writing that has an aesthetic feel to it, or a rhythm to it. Would certain students find it easier to write transactional, expressivley or poetically?  Mitton explains that "these kinds of writing contribute to the development of children's power to use language."  On page 6, it looks like he is saying children first talk, which then leads them into reading and then writing.  I'm not sure I'm reading this correctly because on page 4 he includes an illustration of a four year old's writing, which tells me they write first. On page 4 he also says that "all forms of speech are not equally useful as starting points for writing" and he uses dialogue as his example. What is the best starting points for writing? It's clear by his visual on page 10 that expressive writing straddles between transactional and poetic, telling us that transactional writing can be expressive and expressive writing can be poetic, but that transactional writing can not be poetic. My graphic organizer is a venn diagram. In a venn diagram, where the intersection of two circles, transactional and poetic, would overlap and form an intersection of expressive writing. On page 12, Mitton explain that when transactional writing has expressive language that it is more developed and "becomes more explicit", whereas when expressive writing becomes poetic that "it reaches a wider audience...by heightening or intensifying the implicit."This sounds to me that Mitton feels that poetic writing is a richer type of writing and is more inclusive with readers, that more people can relate to poetic writing than to the other types. As he said, I don't have to agree with that.  There are a pile of people that do not relate well to flowery writing - they would just prefer the facts.  On page 15 he says that "Expressive language provides an essential starting point because it is language close to the self of the writer: and progress towards the transactional should be gradual enough to ensure that the 'the self' is not lost on the way." This would be necessary to make writing about facts more interesting; it would give the writing voice making the writing pleasing to read.  I think when Mitton is talking about expressive writing he is talking about the writer's voice. How could I use Mitton's ideas with my students?  In report writing, it can sound flat and dull because it's 'just the facts mam', so asking my students to include how the information impacts their life would make them think beyond just the information, it would bring some blood and life into their writing so that it does contain some voice.  It would be interesting to ask my students to write a grocery or to do list poetically.   The parts of Mitton's articles about developmental stages children go through in the writing process, reminded me of my developmental psych class learning about Piaget and his focus on how and when children learn.  Honestly, I struggled with making a personal connection to this article. I would never have thought of writing transactional information in poetic form if I had not read this article.  It's interesting to me to contemplate taking a piece of writing and rewriting it in the three different ways.