“I don’t feel like writing.” Does this sound familiar? Many young children, especially K-5 students, don’t seem like they have a desire to write. With state standards to meet and future leaders in need of academic development, this can be a frustrating situation.
Susan Koehler, a writing consultant with over 20 years of teaching experience, once asked a class of her fourth graders why they claimed to dislike writing. “Overwhelmingly, my students told me that they never got to write what they wanted to write," writes Susan in her new book, The Complete K-5 Writing Workshop. "They were always given topics and prompts. They were told what to write and how to write it. They were given time limitations and paragraph requirements."
It was not that her students didn't enjoy writing—it is that they didn't like the restrictive fashion in which writing had traditionally been taught. “These students were creative beings,” Susan writes, “wanting to have some freedom and ownership over the writing process.”
“Children’s lives are filled with specific events and experiences," said Susan in a recent interview, "The vocabulary and the description and the wealth of knowledge they carry with them is built upon those experiences that they have had. If they are going to do their very best writing, they need to be able to choose from what is meaningful and important to them specifically."
Susan described a time when she saw one of her students staring out a window during a writing exercise. She asked the young boy what he was thinking about, and he answered: “I am thinking about what to write." Susan looked out the window and saw broken-down machinery and rusty trailers and felt an incredible sadness.
Later on, when Susan read what the little boy had written, she was astonished to find the following: “The world is full of laughter and beautiful people and the people at this school are beautiful people, especially the children.”
This was an emotional moment for Susan--one that proved to her that children are capable of producing incredible work when it comes from within and not from standardized prompts.
Knowing she was responsible for meeting state standards and preparing her students for district and state assessments, Susan learned from this magical experience and developed a way to creatively engage her students in the writing process.
She went to the local discount store and purchased inexpensive spiral notebooks for each of her students. She told her students that these notebooks were their “free-writing journals” and that, within certain guidelines, they were allowed to write on topics that interested them.
“What my students realized is that they had a lot to say,” writes Susan. “Those journals became sacred. Some children wrote poetry, and others wrote stories. Some wrote informational pieces, and a couple of students wrote plays. Several children kept a personal journal for recording experiences and exorcising negative emotions. Most importantly, they realized that they actually liked writing.”
Thus, the cornerstone of The Complete K-5 Writing Workshop, was formed: designing an environment that allows students to discover a passion for writing. After students realize that they can enjoy writing, they are more open to learning the mechanics of how to write.
In her new book, Susan gives creative instructions for how to teach the mechanics of writing while engaging the student on a personal level, from pre-writing and drafting, to revising, editing, and even publishing. The appendix also provides rubrics, checklists, planners, graphic organizers, practice sheets and activities.
The initial lessons in Susan’s Daily Writing Workshop consist of what could be described as a learning sandwich. First, she introduces new skills to her students. Then, she has them perform a writing exercise to apply their newly learned skills. Lastly, she reviews and discusses the writing exercises with them and reinforces the skills taught / used in that lesson.
“One student in particular who, after doing this for a little while, said to me, ‘I used to not like writing, but this is fun,’" said Susan.
She believes that students need to express themselves as individuals, and that uniformity isn’t necessary for success: “Writing is one of the disciplines that is open-ended," she said. "In math, convergence is necessary to reach the correct answer; in writing, divergence is not a bad thing--you can have a different answer from someone else and still be correct.”
0 comments:
Post a Comment