Building
Great Writers
Over the past 15 years of teaching English to middle school
students, I have worked diligently and rigorously on alleviating my
frustrations when teaching and reviewing writing. Every year I start out with the same
expectations (alright, maybe a dream) that my students will write an articulate
first essay that is sprinkled with strong verbs and adjectives, constructed
with a solid structure, and speckled with flowing sentences that are craftily
placed. However, my hopes soon become a pipe dream, as my students still
struggle with the same skills-writing a solid introduction, conclusion, and
lengthening their sentences to sound more fluid, refined and sophisticated. I
know they learned these techniques the year prior, and I ask myself, why are these skills not sticking, and what
can I do to fix this…quickly? I thought I would share with you how I have learned
and created successful and fluent writers, as well as the techniques, tricks,
and tips that seem to work.
First, my motto is to engage, simplify and excite. Let me be frank. As much as we want to think so, most middle
school students do not like to write, especially structured essays;
therefore, creating exciting and engaging writing lessons, which simplifies the
process, is always my first task. I have
turned the parts of an introduction into a silly acronym-Give The Toddler The
Cookie (Grabber, Transitional Sentence, TAG, Thesis Statement and Concluding
Sentence). The acronym for the body paragraph is TALES-Topic Sentence, Add an
example/Claim, Lift a line/Cite a line from the text, Elaborate and Sum it up.
I have my students repeat and practice this over and over until it is engrained
in their mind, and crazy enough, they can recall it very easily!
Secondly, scaffolding the writing process is so important,
and as teachers, we can’t always expect them to know everything. One can easily
use the metaphor that writing is a building process. A teacher has to start from the foundation to
build higher-level writing techniques; in other words, a teacher has to start
with the basics, practice the basics, to move to the next step or floor. Therefore,
I start all the way in the basement with more sophisticated words and
sentences. We work on replacing “dead words”, lengthening sentences with
compound and complex sentences and choosing more sophisticated words. In
essence, these small techniques produce better paragraphs. I then move onto technique and
structure. I build the foundation of an
introduction, a body paragraph and a conclusion. This does not happen
overnight. This is a good week and half
process that consists of a lot (A LOT) of practice and mastery. Once we practice this, we move onto the
harder items like citations and elaboration.
Lastly, when I was in elementary school, I distinctly
remember practicing skills repeatedly until I mastered the skill (Do you
remember writing the script “S” over and over?). Unfortunately, because we are short on time
and our curriculums are more complex and riddled with work, we don’t have the
time to spend with our students to teach them how to master a skill. In education today, it is about teaching a
skill, quickly moving onto the next subject and covering the curriculum. I firmly believe in mastering a skill. How can I expect my students to write well if
I only taught and practiced the techniques of writing once? Therefore, when I
teach writing, if I have to quiz my students every day for two weeks on the
acronym “TALES” and what it stands for, this is what I will do until all the
students get it correct and MASTER the skill.
Right from the
beginning of the year, I have my students write out a model-planning page for
themselves, that they can apply to any class.
As a “Do Now”, I will have them practice writing their planning page
over and over without any assistance, until they have it completely memorized.
Sometimes I will grade their planning page, and sometimes I will have them just
write it out for practice. All in all,
the repetition is essential to commit these items to memory.
If you notice, there is a common theme here, and that is scaffolding,
practice, and repetition. If you are
constantly and consistently jogging your students’ memory on the same skills,
it will eventually become embedded in their brain bank. It’s easy: build a
writing structure for your students, practice, and repeat the process again
until it is mastered. You will then begin to see the amazing changes in your
students’ writing.
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