Writing

 Writing in the Classroom

The Role of Writing

In the English Language Arts classroom, writing should share the stage with reading. Writing is the cornerstone of literacy. It is the key opening the way to criticality, self-reflection, improved communication and creativity, and deeper thinking (Terada, 2021). Our students should write every day to build their mental stamina, improve their writing, and strengthen their critical thinking.

Writing Practices

In my classroom, I have found what Allison Marchetti and Rebeka O'Dell call Mentor Texts (2015) to be exceptionally invaluable. I can teach students the rules and structure of writing in the academic setting. I can teach them about every writing tool in the writer's toolbox, but teaching students how to write is a little more complicated. Mentor text are writing examples students can use to see how writers employ the tools at their disposal.

William Faulkner is quoted as saying:

Read, read, read. Read everything - trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out the window.

Faulkner is not the only author to recommend reading as a way of learning to write. Stephen King, in his memoir On Writing (2020), tells those wanting to be writers that they "must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut." Others have repeated the same advice: to be a better writer you must read. And not only should you read, you should read like a writer (Marchetti & O'Dell, 2015), paying attention to the way writers use the rules of writing to create engaging and compelling texts.

In addition to mentor texts, I assign quick writes, reader responses to text dependent questions, essays, narratives, and poetry. I want my students writing often and in various contexts and genres. Becoming better writers means writing.

Incorporating Writing in the Classroom

As previously mentioned, writing should take place daily. Not every writing needs to be a two to twenty page essay. Depending on your context, start slow. I will have students engage in quick writing exercises, inviting them to respond to questions and prompts related to our learning goals. Alongside class discussions, I believe answering essential, higher-order thinking questions in writing is an effective way to improve writing skills, criticality, and foster deep thinking.

To assess student engagement and comprehension of classroom texts, I have students answer text-dependent questions. I vary the depth of each question. Some responses need only a couple sentences to describe an incident in the reading. Other responses require a paragraph or more to make connections with the text, analyze events, or describe character motivations as they develop through the story.

Mentor texts play a role in writing. I've used articles, short stories, and essays to show students how to write in specific context and genres. During a unit on informative writing, my mentor teacher and I used a student's essay to demonstrate what informative writing looks like. We pointed out the use of quotes and paraphrases and the way the young author synthesized them into their writing. We leaned in on how the writer organized their essay, made claims, supported their claims, and explained the relevance of their evidence.

Every unit in my ELA context incorporates writing. Whether students are producing longer essays, short ACER responses, or brief answers to questions. The use of writing improves the skill of writing and benefits communication, critical thinking, creativity, and memory (Smith, n.d.).

Supporting Students as Writers

There are a number of ways I support my students as writers. First, I encourage my students. I don't expect works of Shakespeare, John Milton, Charolette Perkins Gilman, or Emily Bronte from my students.They are students learning to write. I encourage and celebrate honest attempts at writing.

I religiously advocate using writer's workshops when students are assigned a larger writing assignment or performance task. I host brain storming sessions, peer reviews, and peer assessments. This leads ultimately to student self-assessments using rubrics assigned at the beginning of the unit. Writer's workshops promote collaboration, idea sharing, provide feedback from diverse perspectives, and allows students to teach each other.

Mentor texts. If I was to single out the most important thing I learned in my Single Subject English Curriculum course, it would have to be the use of mentor texts. Mentor texts support all students. EL students, for example, can practice fluency in reading and writing English using mentor text to demonstrate the use and deployment English is a variety of written contexts.

Along with using mentor texts, teaching students how to find mentor texts support them as writers. They can find mentors whose voices appeal to them and from whom they can learn.