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Teaching Students to Be Writers

Seven suggestions

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1. Focus on why we write

2. Treat students as authors

3. Teach the Tricks of the Trade

4. Give driving lessons

5. Provide lots of models

6. Praise

7. Publish

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1. Why we write

1. To demonstrate knowledge, understanding and skills

2. To communicate – inform, persuade, entertain

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3. To record (?) information and experience

There is only one reason to write, and it is not to serve literary fashion or scholarly fads. It is, as it was in the beginning, to get a grip on our existence. Or to flag it down for a moment as it flies past. If we also win a little harmony from the human bedlam, that is serendipity.Maurice Shadbolt, New Zealand author

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4. To understand ourselves & our world better

How can I know what I think till I see what I say? E.M. Forster

… students need to be taught that the act of writing is intrinsically valuable to them. It crystallizes one’s thoughts in a way that nothing else can. As a physicist, I find that I often learn more from writing papers and proposals than I do from working in the laboratory. I rarely find writing easy, but I always find it rewarding.Louis Bloomfield, Professor of Physics, United States

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5. The same reason we build sandcastles and draw pictures:

Ultimately, there is only one reason to write. Because you have a cool idea, and you want to see what it looks like on paper.Michael Duff http://www.livejournal.com/users/michaelduff/129882.html

creative pleasure!

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to firmly establish the need for a collective endeavor, to build a world where there is room for love, solidarity, laughter, the pleasure of the senses, the growth of the spirit, and imagination. I write because if I didn't I would die. Isabel Allende

I write to communicate, to survive, to make the world more understandable and bearable, so that people may be moved by the things that matter to me,

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Writing: The real outcomes we seek• Students write with passion and commitment

about things that matter to them.• Students use writing as a way of coming to

grips with their experience and their world.• Students wrestle with language in an

attempt to make their writing engage with readers.

• Students enjoy experimenting with written language for the sheer joy of the creativity involved.

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Resources for Writing: The Student’s World

Their Social Environment

• Immediate family• Extended family• School community• Neighbourhood• Peer group• Teams, clubs etc

• Home• Street• Suburb• Parks• Beache

s• City• State

• Buses • Trains• Shops• Restaurant

s• Markets• Experience

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Their physical environment

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2. Treat students as authors engaged in constructing texts,

rather than as students completing assignments

Memoirists

Oral Historians

Expert Advisers

Guidebook Writers

Journalists

Observers of Life

Critics

Opinion Writers

Consultant Advisers

Story Makers

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• Give them choices - focus on the writing objectives, not

the subject matter

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3. Teach the Tricks of the Trade

• Beyond set and collect: process, process, process

• Treat all tasks involving writing as tasks where students are learning, and therefore need to be taught, how to write

• Spend a lot of time teaching students how to generate ideas, collect information, mind map and draft

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• Drafting and revision: help them find their own way

• One sentence, one paragraph

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How many ways of expressing these ideas are there?

I would like to go out with you.

I have a nasty disease.

Syntax: Illustrating that there’s always more than one way

• Sentence level tricks of the trade: an example

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1. I would like to go out with you, but I have a nasty disease.

2. I would like to go out with you. However, I have a nasty disease.

3. Although I would like to go out with you, I have a nasty disease.

4. I have a nasty disease, but I would like to go out with you.

5. Although I have a nasty disease, I would like to go out with you.

6. I, who have a nasty disease, would like to go out with you.

7. Having a nasty disease, I would like to go out with you.

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4. Driving lessons: One on one conferencing

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• Be realistic: - You’ll never do it as well as you want

but what you do will be better than nothing

• Be strategic: - You are not editing their work for them;

you are looking for teaching opportunities- You don’t have to read everything- Ask them what they want you to look at

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5. Models• Provide models - write for them and with

them ‘People may doubt what you say but

they will believe what you do’

• Provide different models so they know there is no one right way

• Keep interesting examples by previous students

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6. Praise, praise, praise

• We live by encouragement and we die without it - slowly, sadly, angrily. (Celeste Holm)

• Remember they are developing and reward experimentation: learning to walk involves falling over a lot at the start

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7. Publish, publish, publish

• Read aloud

• Photocopy and distribute

• Display

• Reader Comment Sheets

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• Using the internet – Blogger and Word Press – free, multiple users, restrict access, can be for all/best work

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You can make magic happen in the

classroomYour students are waiting for you to

do it.

Don’t let them down.