This I believe.....

I believe that writing is the only way of preserving humanity. Through written word, the soul of humanity is held for the future. The emotions, brillance, rational, logic, pain and mistakes of past explain themselves through this medium.
A statue in the desert can show you a great egyptian pharoah, translate the features of the man into the godlike image. The epitaph tells you who he is and what he did. The hieroglyphics in his correlating tomb tells of what he did. Without the latter two, you lose the significance of the man, who he was, why the statue exists and inly left with a large stone statue.
In history, fossils, pictures, artifacts, buildings, weapons all tell stories of their own, but only through writing can we explore the soft tissue of the brain that has long since rotted away (unless your name is Otzi) and explore the actual person.
The students need to know the value of writing. They need to be able to do it effectivily as defined as communicating clearly with the reader.
In my classroom, writing will become more of a focus, beginning at the basic levels of scaffolding and product construction. This will paraelle the reading work as the year progresses.