Lesson 1: Getting Started
Are you ready to get started? Then pull up your chair and let's begin. This lesson will cover a few writing basics and some warm-ups you can use to get your students ready to write.
Teaching Writing
When I first started teaching, we taught writing the "old fashioned way" with story starters and more emphasis on the product than on the process. My students wrote the obligatory "What Did You do on Your Summer Vacation?" types of essays and really didn't look forward to writing at all.
Then, about 15 years into my career, I attended a workshop on teaching writing that changed my professional life - and helped me make writing a fun and rewarding experience for my students. I began using a Writing Workshop approach, and that change in philosophy was vital. After using that approach, I can't imagine doing it any other way!
In this workshop I will share some of my own experiences, some books that I have found to be personally rewarding, and some teaching ideas to take with you and use right away in your own classrooms.
One of the first lessons I learned is that for children to become writers, the writing must be meaningful to them. No matter what aspect of writing you are teaching, students need to feel that the subjects they are writing about are important to them. When they do, their writing takes on a new dimension, and both you, and they, will be amazed at the results. So, in each lesson, although I suggest a theme or an idea, be sure to give your children the freedom within that context to choose an idea that they love, to go off and explore, and to just have fun with the writing.
Teaching writing well takes time. Once I began using a Writer's Workshop approach, I found that with my fourth graders, I needed to devote at least an hour a day to writing. That sounded hard, with all of the other curriculum constraints, but as I began to integrate reading and other subject areas with the writing, I found that I could easily find the extra time my students needed.
The resource books for this course will give you a wonderful background on the workshop approach and the writing process in general. Each of those topics could be a course in itself, so for this course, I will focus on some specifics that can easily be used as mini-lessons, and some practical ideas to use right away.
Another important idea to focus on is the response you and your students give each other. Good writers need an audience - someone to be writing for. Giving students the chance to share their work is of utmost importance. In my classroom, I had a special "Sharing Chair" for the students to use when they read their work to the class. Students should also be sharing work with you individually and with their peers. And don't forget to write with them, and to share what you write, too. In this workshop, for each writing genre I will include at least one way for students to present or share their work with others.
Teaching writing well takes a huge commitment from you, the teacher. But it is well worth it! My students produced some wonderful pieces of writing over the years. They made their own books, won writing contests, and developed writing skills far above students I'd had in previous years. I even heard from a former student a few years back, who was ready to start her student teaching. She had been in my fifth grade class many years ago, and she was now looking for my advice for her own start to teaching. One of her comments was to recall how much fun she had during our writing workshops, and how she hoped to bring that same excitement to her own students. Well worth it, indeed!
