A few more tips ...

Summer vacation has come to an end and it’s time to receive a new class of kids. Planning curriculum is likely foremost on your mind. My belief is that the writing component of the teaching day is a close second to reading fluency in its importance to a child’s education. It follows that a lot of thought and planning should go into teaching writing in order to create a strong program in the elementary classroom.  

A first thought that comes to my mind is the importance of a stress free environment when you are teaching writing. To mine that astonishing creativity with which kids are endowed, do everything in your power to make writing a joyful process.

• Think of topics that will excite them. Throw out some bold ideas on the topic to serve as catalysts for “outside the box” thinking. Encourage others to share ideas. We learn from others, after all.

• Break up the assignment into multiple lessons. Don’t overwhelm students by asking them to show you the “Six Traits of Writing” in the first lesson! In my personal writing I find it difficult to produce the first draft of a new assignment. I want my amazing ideas to appear on my paper, but concerns about sentence structure, organization, word choice, etc. impede my performance. Thank heavens for Anne Lamott’s advice in her handy book on writing called Bird by Bird. Write a “shitty” first draft she advises. This has been one of thé most invaluable pieces of advice I have ever obtained. It is so liberating to know that it’s perfectly okay to let those thoughts flow. There will be plenty of time later to express those thoughts in beautiful prose.

I have more to say on this subject, but I’ll save it for later blog entries.

• Teachers often worry that assigning creative writing in the classroom is frivolous. In the real world most people use expository writing, they point out. So in the classroom we need to emphasize non-fiction writing skills. I have a lot to say about this, but I’ll try to be brief. As a writer myself, I have found that creative writing (specifically, writing novels) has been crucial to the development of my own writing skills. Ultimately, good writing is the art of stringing together words to create coherent sentences, and organizing these sentences into a readable sequence. Why not use a fun, nonthreatening platform to teach these skills? Of course, I am not saying that all writing in the classroom should be fiction. During the teaching day students ought to be constantly producing expository writing in the content areas.

• Good literature and the teaching of writing are inextricably linked. Teach kids to read with a writer's eye. As you expose them to great books like Bridge to Terabithia and Charlotte's Web, spend time appreciating the prose, the imagery, character details, etc. Whenever you work on a specific writing skill, such as describing a setting, seek out examples from literature.

In my next entry I will discuss journal writing during the first week of school.

Stay tuned!