My fondest writing memories stem from elementary school. Each year we would participate in the local Young Authors writing competition. I specifically remember working diligently on a story set in a forest that was filled with talking animals and then another about a young Jewish girl’s experience in a concentration camp. Both times, I would bring my drafts home to my bedroom, light a candle and listen to George Winston’s Forest album as I would write to my heart’s content. This memory continued into college as I was asked to publish a children’s alphabet book for a class. I remember bringing my work home one weekend, drafting rhymes with my mother and then creating the pages of the book that I still have tucked away in my closet.
I hadn’t thought about these memories until I began thinking about creating authentic writing experiences for my own students. In fact, as an adult, I had let my memories of blissful pride be overshadowed by my own negative attitude towards writing. When asked to write anything, I would always scrunch up my nose and say, “Oh-I am not a writer.” This attitude followed me into my classroom, as I was trusted with the job of developing my students into writers. I’ve always taught writing to the best of my ability but it has been the one subject I have lacked confidence in throughout the duration of my teaching career. A necessity of course, but it was never my favorite. My writing instruction lacked purpose and authenticity. I taught pieces, not processes. And as far as having students share their published work? Not so much.
I knew something needed to change last year when my students completed their African animal reports right before we took our annual overnight field trip to the Cincinnati Zoo. Earlier in the year, I had been given the task to build a nonfiction text set that deepened students’ comprehension through background knowledge and vocabulary building. These reports were phenomenal. I shared them with a few people who were shocked to see that second graders could write so well. My students were so proud of themselves, and I was proud of their hard work. But instead of having them share and celebrate in an authentic way, I simply put them away in a writing folder and sent them on to the next year’s teachers.
Ann Marie Corgill described this process best in her book Of Primary Importance: What’s Essential in Teaching Young Writers as she described the year that she would shove students’ published pieces into a cabinet only to deal with them later. One day she watched a student put the finishing touches on a piece he had been working on. He wrote “The End” at the bottom, walked right over to the cabinet, threw his piece inside and returned back to what he was doing. She said from that day on everything changed for her as a teacher of writing-every piece of writing that they did moving forward had a purpose. Like Corgill, my African animal report was my “cabinet” moment. It wasn’t that I didn’t care; I simply lacked the knowledge to know what to do. This all changed as I entered my journey with CTEPS (Classroom Teachers Enacting Positive Solutions). CTEPS has been a year long opportunity that has given me the chance to collaborate with other teacher leaders throughout Kentucky to work on action research projects to improve student learning.
My challenge this year was to become the writing teacher that my students deserved. In order to accomplish this, I needed an aim. Keeping my African animal project at the forefront of my mind, I decided to focus on having my students write for authentic purposes and then publish their pieces in authentic ways. With writing as a focus this year in our school, this seemed like the perfect time to tackle my problem. I began my research on young writers and what motivated them to write. Through my research, I found over and over again that students become more motivated to write when they have an authentic purpose. Students also are more motivated when they begin to view themselves as authors. In order to do this, students must be given multiple opportunities throughout the year for publication. Lucy Calkins explains that publishing is the key to motivating our writers to write more. Keeping this in mind, I knew that I needed to cultivate a culture of writing in my classroom by asking my students to write more authentically and allow more opportunities for authentic publishing.
Was any of this an easy process? No. I’ve poured over my research and constantly asked myself, “Am I doing this right?” I’ve made mistakes along the way but those mistakes have helped me grow. I feel more confident in my ability to teach writing and finally feel like I’m blossoming into the writing teacher that my students have always deserved.
I struggled a lot with what it meant to publish a piece. When students wrote their Realistic Fiction short stories, they worked extremely hard on their rough drafts. We poured over them and they felt SUCH sense of accomplishment after we had conferenced and then revised. They thought that they were finished because we had never worked so long or hard on a piece of writing. When I told them that they would be rewriting them in their best handwriting, many were crushed and overwhelmed! I made each student rewrite their book, a process that turned very tedious and grueling. I thought I was doing the right thing, but in reality, many of my students were not developmentally ready to do that. For some, their rough drafts were much better than their final pieces because they were not able to transfer their 5-7 page drafts to a final copy. I realize now that publishing can look different for every child. When students publish a piece of writing, they have been asked to go through the writing process, producing multiple drafts and given time to conference, revise and edit. What’s right for one student may not be what’s best for another. That experience taught me to focus more on the process of writing, not the product.
The real joy came when it was time to publish the realistic fiction short stories that my students had been working on to read to a kindergarten class. I overheard a conversation between two students in which they decided to add more colors and details to their illustrations because “kindergarteners like bright colors”. I heard another student say, “Oh, I need to rewrite this. This is not clear for my reader!” That was the moment I knew that they began to understand their purpose and audience. It was authentic and something that never would’ve been accomplished had they been writing just for the “cabinet”.
Want to get started? Here's what I've learned along the way:
1. Make a plan
Sit down with your team and make a tentative plan for your year. Map out your writing units and decide how you will have students publish and share their writing. Make the writing and sharing authentic. Be intentional, students need a purpose. In the
resources tab, you will find an authenticity rating scale which can help you as you plan.
2. Keep it simple
With so many resources available at your fingertips, it can all be a bit overwhelming! Start simple. Doing something is better than not doing anything at all. In the past, I would have my students write all the time but didn't have an authentic purpose for them. I know now that this hindered their motivation. This year I took our writing units and gave them a purpose with a simple way to publish. I am looking forward to refining them next year!
Realistic Fiction-Read to Kindergarten class
Animal Nonfiction Report-Publishing Party
Opinion Piece-Write to the Cincinnati Zoo to persuade them to display our
African Animal writing reports
African Animal Report-Compile into class books and display at the
Cincinnati Zoo
3. Write everyday, multiple times a day
Students must WRITE if we want them to become better writers! Incorporate some type of writing in every lesson. Write in all subject areas. Make Writer's Workshop a priority. Students need to see and believe that writing is important.
4. Cultivate a culture of writers in your classroom
I knew if I wanted my students to view themselves as authors, I needed to change the way my students and I approached writing. We began writing in every subject area for different purposes. I would purposely incorporate some type of writing in every lesson, whether students were asked to write to demonstrate learning of a new math strategy or were taking notes during a reading lesson. I changed the way I talked to my students. I began to refer to them as writers and authors. During read alouds, I would highlight the author and illustrator, revisiting them during writing craft lessons and conferences with students. The more I emphasized authors’ crafts, the more I saw my students demonstrate it in their own writing. Students made connections to authors and began seeing things through a writer’s eye.
5. Let go of perfection...focus on the process, not the product
Writing is MESSY! This can make a Type A teacher like myself extremely anxious! But you know what? The moment I decided to let go and let my writers do their thing, amazing things began to happen. Did I make mistakes along the way? Absolutely-and that's okay! Mistakes help us learn and grow.
I hadn’t thought about these memories until I began thinking about creating authentic writing experiences for my own students. In fact, as an adult, I had let my memories of blissful pride be overshadowed by my own negative attitude towards writing. When asked to write anything, I would always scrunch up my nose and say, “Oh-I am not a writer.” This attitude followed me into my classroom, as I was trusted with the job of developing my students into writers. I’ve always taught writing to the best of my ability but it has been the one subject I have lacked confidence in throughout the duration of my teaching career. A necessity of course, but it was never my favorite. My writing instruction lacked purpose and authenticity. I taught pieces, not processes. And as far as having students share their published work? Not so much.
I knew something needed to change last year when my students completed their African animal reports right before we took our annual overnight field trip to the Cincinnati Zoo. Earlier in the year, I had been given the task to build a nonfiction text set that deepened students’ comprehension through background knowledge and vocabulary building. These reports were phenomenal. I shared them with a few people who were shocked to see that second graders could write so well. My students were so proud of themselves, and I was proud of their hard work. But instead of having them share and celebrate in an authentic way, I simply put them away in a writing folder and sent them on to the next year’s teachers.
Ann Marie Corgill described this process best in her book Of Primary Importance: What’s Essential in Teaching Young Writers as she described the year that she would shove students’ published pieces into a cabinet only to deal with them later. One day she watched a student put the finishing touches on a piece he had been working on. He wrote “The End” at the bottom, walked right over to the cabinet, threw his piece inside and returned back to what he was doing. She said from that day on everything changed for her as a teacher of writing-every piece of writing that they did moving forward had a purpose. Like Corgill, my African animal report was my “cabinet” moment. It wasn’t that I didn’t care; I simply lacked the knowledge to know what to do. This all changed as I entered my journey with CTEPS (Classroom Teachers Enacting Positive Solutions). CTEPS has been a year long opportunity that has given me the chance to collaborate with other teacher leaders throughout Kentucky to work on action research projects to improve student learning.
My challenge this year was to become the writing teacher that my students deserved. In order to accomplish this, I needed an aim. Keeping my African animal project at the forefront of my mind, I decided to focus on having my students write for authentic purposes and then publish their pieces in authentic ways. With writing as a focus this year in our school, this seemed like the perfect time to tackle my problem. I began my research on young writers and what motivated them to write. Through my research, I found over and over again that students become more motivated to write when they have an authentic purpose. Students also are more motivated when they begin to view themselves as authors. In order to do this, students must be given multiple opportunities throughout the year for publication. Lucy Calkins explains that publishing is the key to motivating our writers to write more. Keeping this in mind, I knew that I needed to cultivate a culture of writing in my classroom by asking my students to write more authentically and allow more opportunities for authentic publishing.
Was any of this an easy process? No. I’ve poured over my research and constantly asked myself, “Am I doing this right?” I’ve made mistakes along the way but those mistakes have helped me grow. I feel more confident in my ability to teach writing and finally feel like I’m blossoming into the writing teacher that my students have always deserved.
I struggled a lot with what it meant to publish a piece. When students wrote their Realistic Fiction short stories, they worked extremely hard on their rough drafts. We poured over them and they felt SUCH sense of accomplishment after we had conferenced and then revised. They thought that they were finished because we had never worked so long or hard on a piece of writing. When I told them that they would be rewriting them in their best handwriting, many were crushed and overwhelmed! I made each student rewrite their book, a process that turned very tedious and grueling. I thought I was doing the right thing, but in reality, many of my students were not developmentally ready to do that. For some, their rough drafts were much better than their final pieces because they were not able to transfer their 5-7 page drafts to a final copy. I realize now that publishing can look different for every child. When students publish a piece of writing, they have been asked to go through the writing process, producing multiple drafts and given time to conference, revise and edit. What’s right for one student may not be what’s best for another. That experience taught me to focus more on the process of writing, not the product.
The real joy came when it was time to publish the realistic fiction short stories that my students had been working on to read to a kindergarten class. I overheard a conversation between two students in which they decided to add more colors and details to their illustrations because “kindergarteners like bright colors”. I heard another student say, “Oh, I need to rewrite this. This is not clear for my reader!” That was the moment I knew that they began to understand their purpose and audience. It was authentic and something that never would’ve been accomplished had they been writing just for the “cabinet”.
Want to get started? Here's what I've learned along the way:
1. Make a plan
Sit down with your team and make a tentative plan for your year. Map out your writing units and decide how you will have students publish and share their writing. Make the writing and sharing authentic. Be intentional, students need a purpose. In the
resources tab, you will find an authenticity rating scale which can help you as you plan.
2. Keep it simple
With so many resources available at your fingertips, it can all be a bit overwhelming! Start simple. Doing something is better than not doing anything at all. In the past, I would have my students write all the time but didn't have an authentic purpose for them. I know now that this hindered their motivation. This year I took our writing units and gave them a purpose with a simple way to publish. I am looking forward to refining them next year!
Realistic Fiction-Read to Kindergarten class
Animal Nonfiction Report-Publishing Party
Opinion Piece-Write to the Cincinnati Zoo to persuade them to display our
African Animal writing reports
African Animal Report-Compile into class books and display at the
Cincinnati Zoo
3. Write everyday, multiple times a day
Students must WRITE if we want them to become better writers! Incorporate some type of writing in every lesson. Write in all subject areas. Make Writer's Workshop a priority. Students need to see and believe that writing is important.
4. Cultivate a culture of writers in your classroom
I knew if I wanted my students to view themselves as authors, I needed to change the way my students and I approached writing. We began writing in every subject area for different purposes. I would purposely incorporate some type of writing in every lesson, whether students were asked to write to demonstrate learning of a new math strategy or were taking notes during a reading lesson. I changed the way I talked to my students. I began to refer to them as writers and authors. During read alouds, I would highlight the author and illustrator, revisiting them during writing craft lessons and conferences with students. The more I emphasized authors’ crafts, the more I saw my students demonstrate it in their own writing. Students made connections to authors and began seeing things through a writer’s eye.
5. Let go of perfection...focus on the process, not the product
Writing is MESSY! This can make a Type A teacher like myself extremely anxious! But you know what? The moment I decided to let go and let my writers do their thing, amazing things began to happen. Did I make mistakes along the way? Absolutely-and that's okay! Mistakes help us learn and grow.
