Let’s Give Them Something to Write About; Strategies that Get Students Writing (Part 1)
Students struggle with producing writing for many reasons. Some struggle with the idea that their writing has to be perfect. Others have not acquired enough oral vocabulary to feel comfortable writing. Some students have been taught either by teachers’ words or actions that they are not good writers, so lack of confidence impedes attempts to produce writing. Whatever roadblocks stand in their way, it’s our job as educators to teach our students how to write.
The instructional strategies that I use when teaching my students that lead to successful writing instruction included explicitly teaching spelling, sentence writing, and how to build coherent paragraphs. Explicit Instruction is always my number one strategy. I do not assume students gain insight because I told them what to do. I modeled, modeled, and then modeled again if necessary when teaching any new concepts or strategies.
I taught every step of the writing process to every class I’ve ever taught from first grade to sixth grade. I believe students need to know all steps of the writing process to develop as writers. They need to understand that their first draft does not have to be perfect. Drafting allows for opportunities to develop as writers; improve.
How do we get our students writing? And even more important, how do we get our students to want to write? This post will explore strategies educators can use to get students to put pencil to paper or typing to page. Daily writing can include guided writing, daily messages, notes, or letters to individual students or the class.
Guided writing is usually taught during small groups. To engage students in a guided writing lesson, you should create a shared experience so all students can contribute to the writing process. To create a shared experience, you might read an article, book, or short story as a group. You could also share a video or discuss a field trip or science experience. Next, discuss the shared experience and agree on key points for writing. During Guided Writing, the teacher could instruct students on writing conventions such as writing compound sentences, using punctuation correctly, spelling rules, etc. The instruction should be based on the needs of the group and delivered via mini-lessons.
Daily or Morning Messages are paragraphs or notes the teacher posts for the students. In a virtual or hybrid classroom, post messages on the platform you use with your students. In a traditional classroom, post notes on boards or chart paper. Daily Messages can include updates about the class schedule, information to guides students learning, or positive notes to students about their progress. The reason for writing the message will change depending on the situation; however, the intended outcome will not. We want our students to see themselves and us as writers and understand that writing is a way to communicate.
Let's review four writing strategies you can use tomorrow to get your students writing: Visual Thinking Strategies, Building Background Knowledge to Increase Comprehension, Journaling, and the Picture Word Inductive Model. I will share how I used these strategies with students.
Visual Thinking Strategies - I used the VTS strategy recently while modeling a writing lesson in a first-grade class. I read the book Oona by Kelly DiPucchio to create a shared experience. I selected a picture that featured many of the characters from the text. I asked students to tell me what they saw in the picture. As the students identified the characters and objects, I label each. I also provided two sentence starters to activate students' comprehension of the text. Based on the students' reading and writing levels, they could write a sentence using the sentence starters or draw a picture and label it.
This writing lesson's goals include writing complete sentences and spelling sight words, such as " I, " " see,” and "and "correctly. If students were not ready or able to write complete sentences, they could draw pictures of their favorite part of the book. Below are screenshots of my slide, a student's writing, and pictures of students sharing their responses to the story.
In order to build background knowledge to increase comprehension, I used a word bank to teach students key vocabulary before reading the book. I also used definitions, pictures, and real-world objects to develop the students' background knowledge. One example of this was sharing my personal crown (yes I own a crown ) with the students. Pictured below: Google Slide and the crown.
Journaling is a great way to get students writing. First off, I definitely don’t believe all journal writing has to be graded. Journaling, for me, is a way to express thoughts and ideas. Students should be encouraged to list writing topics, write poems or short stories in their journals. I recommend having students tag or identify pages they want you to grade or comment on in their writing journals. This will give the students some choice about what they feel is ready for grading.
I want to share three types of journal writing that do not require the teacher to grade the assignment. Journal entries can be used to inform instruction or aid with developing mini-lessons to improve writing skills.
Pictured below is a brief description of Picture Description Journal, Dialogue Journals, and Journal Diaries and Storytelling.
I used the Journal Diaries and Storytelling writing strategy with a third-grade class. After reading the book Thank You Omu! By Oge Mora. I instructed students to complete a journal entry. In order to support their writing, I provided a Word Bank and Sentence Starters. Below are samples of students' responses to the reading and responses to their writing.
The Picture Word Inductive Model (PWIM), can be completed with PearDeck. Here are two examples from students completing cloze sentences using labeled pictures.
In part two of this post, I will focus on three strategies supporting and encouraging writing: Pre-teaching Vocabulary, Creating Word Walls, or Word Banks. As you review the strategies above, think of ways you might be able to immediately use one or two of them to boost your students’ writing. Also, start modeling writing for your students. They will love to get a message from you. Also, consider sharing your crown… if you don’t have one… get one soon.
