I have always believed that as teachers we need to make writing fun and enjoyable for our students. We need our students to have a positive experience with writing so that they will continue to grow as writers in the future. I recently read Chapter 1 in “Writing Essentials” by Regie Routman that confirmed this belief. I have always let children choose what they want to write about because if they are writing about something they care about, they always put in more effort, and in return their writing turns out better.
Also, I believe we need to look at real world text that is published with our students. For example, writers often play with words to make it more interesting. Take for example the book, “The Night I Followed the Dog,” by Nina Laden. The author mixes art and descriptive words to make the text more interesting. My students are always interested and engaged in this story. Also, after I share this book many of my students think of different descriptive words to use in their stories to make their writing more enjoyable. It really increases students’ word choice.
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| Photo from http://www.amazon.com/Night-I-Followed-Dog/dp/0811806472/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1295737751&sr=8-1#_ |
I still have a few questions even after reading the chapter though. I often wonder what is the right balance between ideas and content and conventions in writing. I don’t want my students to be so concerned with conventions that it limits their ideas and content of their writing. Also, I don’t want my students to be so concerned with conventions that writing becomes stressful and eventually hated. On the other hand, I don’t want my students’ use of conventions to hinder their writing.
I have also read in another book about teaching primary studnets writing that it is so important to give them choice because the quality will be some much better and the students will take pride in their work.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you do about the required writing or do you have specific writing projects that must be done at your school?
I don't actually teach writing at my school this year. We have a writing teacher that teaches writing to all of the students in our school. In my old school my students had to pick between one or two prompts to write about once during the year. The prompts were pretty general like "best friends" and "I like to," so the students could easily share one of their stories.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing about that book! I hadn't heard of it before and am excited to use it with my students! We've talked a lot about descriptive language so incorporating this book will generate some more good conversations!
ReplyDeleteThe second grade class I am working with is currently working on color poems. I may have to check out that book. It takes many questions, but I bet that book (and others like it) would help bring descriptive writing to the front of their minds. Thanks for sharing!
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