I'm not gonna lie: I'm more than a little concerned about having to teach writing. First of all, I don't follow the "writing process" that we've always been taught to follow. Second, it's very difficult in a school setting to help people revise/edit their papers without doing their paper for them. I sat down with my roommate last night and had an extremely productive revision session with him, and he did about 80% of the work. It was a great model of how revision should work. That said, we took about a half hour to work on what ended up being around eight sentences.
While we haven't had enough hands-on instruction when it comes to teaching writing, a lot of the things we've been reading have helped with ideas and practices. It's hard to tell exactly how these activities will work in practice, or how effective they'll be at
teaching writing (as opposed to simply being things to write), but they should be helpful. In no particular order:
- Providing students with models of assignments
This one comes in many forms: writing along with students, using good and bad student papers from prior years, or giving examples of different genres of writing (movie review, comparison/contrast, etc.) are all effective ways of helping students understand what is expected of them.
Giving students three specific areas to focus on in a rough draft will lessen the burden on them while also helping to scaffold towards finished products.
- Revising rough drafts in groups (twice)
A guided revision activity in what is essentially a mini-workshop setting is helpful for a number of reasons. Students get to read each others' papers and therefore see what others' strengths and weaknesses are, they get to work on their own revision skills and strategies, and they practice both giving and receiving criticism. Even better, they have an opportunity to fix their papers more than once. I'd rather give students multiple opportunities to revise after receiving input from peers than give them a grade and allow them to fix it: by the time the paper is graded, it should be done well.
Reader-response journals are a nice alternative to reading quizzes. Not only do they demonstrate that students have read, but they also allow students to make the connections and ask the questions that are important to them.
- One-pagers for SSR choices
I'd love to be able to do SSR, but I'd need to be sure students are actually reading. I think these are a good solution.
Making comics/graphic novels/storyboards lets students engage in a fun activity that also reinforces plot and characterization.
Free-writes are great for short writing activities, as well as brainstorming topics and questions.
- Correcting relevant writing mistakes after assignments are completed
Seeing students' errors and using mini-lessons to work on those errors should be more immediately effective than just teaching concepts because they are concepts.
As Smagorinsky suggests (88), having students prepare questions and lead discussions engages students with the text and enhances their critical thinking about the text.
Like free-writes, journal prompts are great ways to get students to write about things that interest them. Additionally, good prompts will allow the kids both to practice writing and to learn things about themselves.
AOWs are fantastic ideas, mostly because of how little some people actually know about the world around them. Providing students with meaningful texts, especially when they connect to works from class, should be really helpful.
All of these activities/strategies are ones I'd like to use with my students. Looking at the list seems so daunting, though. It seems impossible to have time to do all of these things. I can only hope that I work in a school with 50-minute periods instead of 40-minute ones, or I'll have a hard time doing anything I want to on a regular basis.
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