Challenges for Teachers

BY AMY REZNIK

What does the word "writer" mean to you? Many of us have absorbed the myth of the inspired creator, whose masterpieces seem to flow effortlessly from the pen. This misconception is just one obstacle that teachers must overcome in order to help students improve their writing.

Another is the challenging nature of the activity itself. Writing involves extracting the private and personal and sharing it with the public. Many people consider good writing to be a question of personal taste and thus find it hard to understand how teachers grade writing assignments. Instructional decisions that teachers make can often be traced back to these underlying issues and assumptions.

THE WRITING PROCESS

Teachers take much of the mystery out of writing when they present it as a process that can be practiced and mastered. They may even use their own writing experiences to model the process for their students. This approach weakens counter-productive myths about writing and alleviates fear of the unknown. Although you'll find many variations on the writing process, it can usually be divided into four distinct stages: planning, drafting, reflection, and revision.

GETTING STARTED

During the planning stage, students generate and refine their ideas. This is an informal time during which the student can take risks and test ideas. Some activities, such as free writing and listing, are designed to help students find topics and specific details. Others, such as outlining, help students organize their material.

FEAR OF THE BLANK PAGE

After they have had an opportunity to focus their thoughts, students begin to draft. Unlike the experimental first stage, the draft takes the form of the final product. At this point, students often experience fear when staring at a blank page. It is important for them to understand that they will have one or more opportunities for feedback and revision before being graded.

TIME FOR THOUGHT

The third stage, reflection, can take a number of forms. Its purpose is to give student writers a chance to step back, take an objective look at their work, and decide how to revise. Time for reflection is crucial if writing programs are to produce thoughtful writers.

Reflection is an abstract concept that many students are being exposed to for the first time. Three helpful activities at this stage include student-teacher conferences, workshops, and writing assignments designed to encourage self-reflection. Meeting one-on-one, teachers can help students assess their own writing and make plans for revision. In order for this method to work, teachers need to ask productive questions. Teacher Brenda Powers discusses her own conferencing experiences and shares her most successful tactics.

STUDENTS LEARN TO SEE THEMSELVES AS WRITERS

Self-reflection can also be encouraged by asking students to write about their drafts and about themselves as writers. Students are typically asked to analyze their understanding of the assignment, their success in meeting the assignment, and areas in which they'd like to improve. Teaching students to self-reflect at an early age helps them become better writers. See how students learn to self-reflect as writers in one first-grade classroom.

PEER REVIEWS

Workshops, or peer reviews, give students the opportunity to trade papers and discuss their work. A unique advantage of this activity is that students learn by reading and discussing the work of their peers, as well as receiving direct feedback on their own projects.

POSITIVE FEEDBACK, THEN REVISION

If the reflective stage is to be a success, teachers must provide students with effective questions and guidelines. The teacher's role is to help students focus on substantial issues, such as paragraph structure and thesis statements. Teachers can also prevent students from becoming overly critical and thus discouraging of themselves and their peers.

A basic, widely used model is for positive and objective feedback to be given before suggestions for revision. Negative feedback is to be avoided. Instead of asking a question along the lines of "What is wrong with the essay?" teachers can instruct students to choose one aspect that they'd like to work on further and explain why. Finally, students act on these decisions and revise their drafts.

Teachers' questions should correspond to the grading criteria for the final product. Students will be rewarded for the effort of revising and learning to see their work objectively when their efforts are reflected in good grades. They will also have a clearer understanding of how the teacher arrives at a grade when evaluating their work.

EVALUATION BASED ON CLEAR OBJECTIVES

How can teachers encourage original thought and creative expression and still hold all of their students to uniform standards? This may be the most challenging aspect of writing instruction. Careful consideration and articulation of assignment objectives can help both teacher and student when the time comes to evaluate a writing assignment.

Consider these objectives for a high school essay:

• Have a clearly stated thesis
• Include specific examples that support the thesis statement
• Use an effective structure
• Be free of errors in grammar, spelling, and syntax

STRUCTURE AND FLEXIBILITY

These objectives allow a great deal of flexibility for both teacher and student. Because there are multiple criteria, teachers are able to equally reward essays that have different strengths and weaknesses. An essay that uses strong examples but lacks a clear thesis might receive the same grade as one that has an effective thesis statement but lacks sufficient evidence.

Notice that each of the first three objectives is an abstract quality that can be achieved in many ways. Students decide for themselves how they will meet these objectives. At some levels and for some students, more prescriptive assignments may be appropriate.

Teachers may choose to supplement their objectives with models, hints, and suggestions. For example, they may offer students the choice of following one of several sample outlines while still giving them the freedom to develop their own. In this way, teachers can enable students at different levels to work toward the same goal.

INFORMAL WRITING

Because writing is such a personal act, receiving a grade can make a strong emotional impact on the student. Concerns over grades and grammar can impede creativity and the spontaneous association of ideas and result in a negative attitude toward writing. Teachers must therefore walk a fine line between guiding students toward stronger skills and encouraging them to express themselves. Informal writing assignments can help an instructor maintain this balance.

Informal writing provides a safe forum for students to explore ideas without worrying about pleasing a reader. Teachers must emphasize the difference between informal writing and finished products. Some of the work that a student brings home may appear especially unpolished and even nonsensical. It may contain misspelled words and sloppy punctuation. Students need not develop bad habits as long as there are other opportunities to practice grammar, syntax, and spelling.

As profiled in Parents Magazine, first-grade teacher Hallie Stewart integrates spelling instruction into the writing process. During the drafting stage, students can refer to posters for correct spelling if they wish, or they can invent their own spelling as a way to get their ideas down on paper. After they draft, students reflect on their work by rereading it to make sure that it conveys their meaning and to check for spelling errors.

MOTIVATING STUDENTS TO WRITE

Informal writing activities allow students to make a personal connection to the concepts they learn in the classroom. This is a great way to motivate students in any subject.

Third grade science teacher Lynne Kepler asks her students to keep journals. By watching the world around them and recording their observations, her students make connections between the physical realities of everyday life and the abstract theories they study in school. Journal entries follow the scientific method and anticipate the graded lab reports that students will write as they advance to higher grades.

RELATING TO LITERATURE

In the study of literature, informal writing can also promote positive attitudes and results. Researchers have found that asking students to write autobiographically before beginning a reading assignment helps them achieve a deeper level of comprehension. For example, students may be asked, before reading Catcher in the Rye, to describe a time when they felt misunderstood or, between acts of Hamlet, to remember a difficult decision that they made in the past.

THE POWER OF WRITING

Another way to motivate students is to show them how writing is used outside of the classroom. For some Maryland second graders this means writing letters to each other and mailing them through an elaborate mock postal service that they run themselves.

At the high school level, one Seattle teacher has taught disaffected high school students that they can draw strength from and exercise power through their writing. With assignments such as a proposal to the board of education about their own curriculum, these students have used writing to make a direct impact on their own lives.

THOUGHTFUL WRITERS

A classroom where success depends upon the mastery of formulas does not necessarily produce students who can write well outside the classroom. Formulas, guidelines, and tips have an important place, but they must be part of a curriculum that teaches students how to make informed decisions about their writing.

APPLYING THE CRAFT

Writing programs and curriculums have evolved to encourage versatility. Typical program objectives include the cultivation of writers who think for themselves, who can write to any occasion, who see the value of writing and are able to use it as a tool for their own benefit. To this end, teachers offer students a wide range of writing assignments that address a variety of audiences and serve different purposes. The goal is for every student to become a writer who is intellectually engaged in the craft.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Access these helpful sources through your library:

• Bauer, Anne M. "Write On!" Minneapolis-St. Paul Magazine May 1999: 112.
• Camp, Roberta. "Portfolio Reflection: The Basis for Dialogue." The Clearing House Sept.-Oct. 1998: 10-12.
• Kepler, Lynne. "Journals of Science." Instructor Oct. 1998: 82-83.
• Lindsey, Meredith. "Connections between Reading and Writing." The Clearing House Nov.-Dec. 1996: 103-105.
• Routman, Regie. "Ready to Read." Parents Magazine Oct. 1997.
• Smith, Mary Ann. "Learning to Reflect: A Classroom Experiment." The Clearing House Sept.-Oct. 1998: 24-27.

Click to return to: VIRTUAL LIBRARY TABLE OF CONTENTS