Successful writers

Teaching Pre K-8, Feb 2000 by Manning, Maryann

Ways to encourage the reluctant writers in your classroom.

A cry I frequently hear from teachers about their writing workshops is, "Some of my students just won't write." We encourage our writers, provide an audience and create a classroom environment that fosters writing growth. In spite of all this, we have students whose lack of progress keeps us awake at night.

Types of writers. The Writers in our classrooms are likely to fall into one of five categories:

Students who:

write higher level text than others of their age group

write age-appropriate text

write slightly lower level text than others of their age group

are able to write but do not

do not possess the skill to express themselves in writing

I'll address the latter two categories because these students offer us the greatest challenge.

Traits of students who can write, but do not, include trouble selecting topics, trouble completing a draft, trouble revising a draft and reluctance to publish their work.

Trouble Selecting Topics

We believe that students should write on self-selected topics because such topics are likely to interest them.

You can only wait so long for a student to choose a topic. As much as it conflicts with my philosophy, it may become necessary to offer a prompt.

You might remind the student of something he or she shared with you, or you may use an open-ended prompt like "My favorite place is...", or "I like to eat- because..." or "Remember when you told me about _? I think others would be interested, too."

However, even with selfselected topics, some students will still exhibit little interest in writing.

Trouble Completing a Draft

Some students write a couple of sentences and stop, appearing to be discouraged. I've observed students who have a pile of beginnings in their portfolio, none of which have been developed into a completed draft.

Convincing a student that you find his or her topic interesting sometimes builds confidence and provides encouragement to finish the piece. Often it's necessary to insist that the student select one unfinished piece to be completed by a scheduled time. If a time ultimatum is given, schedule short daily conferences to examine progress and offer encouragement.

Trouble Revising a Draft

Some students have no difficulty writ@ ing drafts; they seem satisfied and express no desire to revise. Certain students, however, engage in peer conferences, listen to suggestions and still don't see the importance of revision. Teacher conferences are, again, the key to helping the student realize that revision is necessary. Asking questions concerning the sequencing of events, the development of characters, and saying 'tell me more" can help in the revision process.

Trouble Publishing

Some students can draft but have no desire to publish. They don't seem to be concerned about the open house, the bulletin board for published work or the young authors' conference.

If conferences haven't been effective, consider having a small publishing group during your writing workshop. Meet with this group every day to check their progress and set goals involving final content revisions, final mechanics revisions and presentation. Although work habits are often the problem, mini-lessons may be necessary if students truly don't know what to do to publish a piece.

A real challenge. What about students who do not possess the skill of expressing themselves in writing? Daily teacher demonstrations of the writing process are crucial in helping students to further understand written language.

Remember Roach Van Allen's language experience strategies? Implement them with frustrated writers by being their scribe or asking another adult or older peer to take dictation from the student. If a student will tell a story into a tape recorder, the story can be transcribed. Allowing students to share their writing before an audience can encourage them further.

The old adage "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink" can be rephrased, "You can offer students the opportunity to write, but they must push their own pencils."

Maryann Manning is on the faculty of the School of Education, The University of Alabama at Birmingham and a Teaching Editor of Teaching K-8. Email: mmanning@uab.edu