In our class readings for the week, the theme is clearly that writing AND learning occur when the activity is meaningful to the student. In fact, Boscolo and Gelati point out that the two components needed to engage students are the student’s personal confidence in his/her own abilities and the level of meaning within the tasks. It is those things combined that make up a student’s perception of writing in general and it is that perception which will drive them to write. The responsibilty of the teacher then becomes to guide students in these endeavors – increasing their confidence in their abilities and giving them opportunities to write in meaningful, interesting ways. In the Graves article, he talks about meeting the man on the plane whose son had Nancie Atwell as a teacher and how she was able take his son from “doing nothing” to having pieces included in her book.
Knowing that we have that responsibility, it becomes (for me) a sort of paradox. The reasons that the chapter says that students lose motivation for writing ( not being “perceived as a flexible tool”, writing being detached from other classroom activities, and boring tasks) are still so true in schools. While I incorporate writing into our Social Studies lessons as well as reading lessons, any writing I assign is met with suspicion that I am somehow “sneaking” writing into other curriculums. I feel like my students have definitely lost the motivation to write somewhere along the way.
So the issue becomes then looking for small ways to start changing their perception of writing, while preparing them for a writing test that will be based on a more scripted type of writing. Just in thinking about it, I feel like the best thing to do would be to start letting them write in different forms – their own blogs, notebooks, chart paper on the walls. The standard, five-paragraph essay is confining and boring – and they need somewhere else to learn that writing itself is not. I also need to continue choosing activities that are interesting (“worthwhile”) in order to convince them that writing has a purpose past a grade or score on a writing test. I also feel like I should write more when they write. Sometimes I will write the essays with them, modeling parts at a time, but I think they should see me (and other staff members) writing in other ways – our own blogs and journals, etc. Writing needs to become a more social activity as well – although this produces a problem as well. Our team is a challenging group of kids who have difficulty working with others, but the chapter points out that collaboration must be done.
