One
of the best things about talking to other teachers is the reassurance you find
in shared experiences. Like knowing you’re not the only one with a secret stash
of wine in their desk––I mean candy. Did I say wine? Weird. I absolutely meant
candy. I’m clearly overtired from too much marking, and feeling the effects of
too much… candy.
Recently
I got an email from a fellow teacher and when I read it, I got that
disorienting, time travel vibe. You know, like when you find an old journal in
the attic. Instantly, I was transported back to my first year of teaching, but
instead of it being a cringey, ohmygosh-I-can’t-believe-I wrote-those-words
moment, it was strangely comforting. Because I recognized the words in the
letter; I had pulled my hair out over the same exasperating problem.
This
was the email:
I’m finding that my students’ writing is HORRENDOUS! I’ve talked with the other ELA teacher in Jr. High, and for some reason, this group is lacking the fundamental skills of writing. Any advice/suggestions, lesson plans, etc. that you would be willing to help me with, or direct me to, would be greatly appreciated. I’m pulling my hair out with this group.
(Anyone else relate? I do have a few suggestions I think
could be helpful, but I’d also love to hear about your own experiences and any
tips and tricks you’ve discovered.)
You see, I think this teacher put her finger on the deeply
entrenched, knobbly root of the problem: students lacking the fundamental
skills of writing. So I like to get back down to the very basics, before
working up to the heady heights of full length essays and narrative discourse.
That’s Genre, Audience, Purpose and Style to you
and me: the very first stop on our path.
Before anything else, students need to know what
their goal is. Is it to inform? Entertain? Persuade? Once they know that,
they need to identify who they’re writing for and what genre
the piece
falls under. All this will help them choose the most appropriate style of
writing.
Lesson Idea: Get your students to look at examples of
formal and informal writing (perhaps articles from Time magazine compared with a Buzzed article) and discuss the differences between them—and the
possible reasons for that.
This is what I meant by ‘the basics'. Dial it all
the way back and zoom right in for a closeup on the building blocks of writing:
words.
I usually spend a good few lessons on this,
looking at the impact of well-chosen, precise, descriptive words. I encourage
students to play around with verbs, adverbs and adjectives, before
experimenting with tone and diction.
Bonus Round: If you’re getting encouraging responses, I’d
even dare you to push your students to think about the ways word choice helps
to create distinctive narrative voices…
Once your students grasp the possibilities of
word choice, it's time to journey down the path a little further and get them to look at how those words
link together in sentences.
A really fun way to get students thinking
creatively about sentences is to introduce them to the concept of variety. Get
them to mix it up! Challenge them to start every sentence a different way.
Encourage them to play around with sentence length.
Sneaky Suggestion: Use this opportunity to
teach the sometimes tedious topic of grammar in a practical way. Improve
fluency by looking at similar sentiments expressed in simple, compound and complex sentences.
The next stop on our path: looking at how sentences structure paragraphs.
At this point, I introduce transition words and
discuss how to structure thoughts and develop arguments. For analytical or
literary writing, I include lessons on how to write thesis statements, embed quotations, make claims and back up those claims.
Top Tip: Don’t be tempted to journey past this stop too
quickly. Let your students focus purely on paragraph writing until they’re
really comfortable—and you’re happy with their great paragraphs. Each lesson,
or paragraph, get them to focus on just one aspect at a time.
Your students are now perfectly primed to journey all the way down the path and start looking at the big picture: the essay as a whole.
But don’t let them run wild just yet! They are
far less likely to lose the thread of their argument if they’re following a
well-constructed map, so this is when I get my students to really think about
planning. (The same principles apply to narrative writing; just swap argument
for plot.)
Visionary Tools: mind mapping, paragraph planning, idea
generation, theme identification, pinpointing focus… it all makes it so much
easier and less daunting for them when they come to writing their essays.
I’ve seen great results from this ‘pathway method’ and
I think it’s because it has three significant benefits for nervous, confused or
insecure students:
1. No more tangles: writing a whole essay or
narrative can be intimidating in the extreme. A lot of students are paralyzed
because they just don’t know where to start or what is expected from them—or,
alternatively, they write themselves in knots. By deconstructing writing into
its component parts like this, students can break down a daunting task into
more manageable activities.
2. A confidence boost: by allowing students to
journey to the higher tiers of writing only once they’ve mastered the ones below,
we can help build their confidence. Which means this is a double benefit! After
all, we all know that confident students make eager, enthusiastic, more
creative students.
3. An unshakable core: when students start from
a solid skills base, every aspect of their writing is made stronger as a
result. An original, imaginative story will lack impact without carefully
chosen words or a distinctive voice. A brilliant argument will crumble without
a well-supported structure. But writing built on these fundamental skills will
stand strong and proud.
______________________________________________________________________________________
In short, no more horrendous writing! No more
teachers pulling out their hair. And—most importantly—less reason to delve into
that secret stash of candy.
Looking for more resources for teaching writing? Check these out:
- Writing a Research Paper PORTFOLIO by The Superhero Teacher
- Peer Editing Stations and Rotations by The Daring English Teacher
- Essay Planning Learning Stations by Room 213