30 Ideas for Writing That Work

8/8/2019 30 Ideas for Writing That Work

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Ideas for Teaching Writing

National Writing Project

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Teaching stud ents to wr ite well is one of th e m ost challenging tasks in educat ion.

Writing itself is complex, often disorderly, and frequently frustrating. When

teachers compare notes and approaches, they invariably conclude that they

need m ore tha n a fixed or single appr oach to t each writing, particularly if they

are to add ress the needs of all studen ts.

Since 1974, more than two million teachers have enriched their writing

classrooms by participating in National Writing Project (NWP) programs.

NWP sum m er institutes and school-year worksh ops are am ong the only places

where teach ers can develop as writers and writing teachers.

The NWP believes that teachers are professionals who have important

knowledge to share. The ideas presented here come from the classrooms of

32 writing project teachers and are intended to help students become more

proficient writers and take more pleasure in writing. These ideas originated

as full-length articles in NWP publications and are available online at www.

writingproject.org

To find a writing project site near you, visit www.writingproject.org email

nw [email protected], or call our na tional office at 510-642-0963.

30 Ideas for Teaching W rit ing


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1Use the shared events of students lives to inspire writing.D E B B I E R O T K O W, a co-director of the Coastal Georgia Writing Project ,

m akes use of the real-life circum stances of her first grade students to h elp th em

compose writing that, in Fra nk Sm iths word s, is natu ral and pu rposeful.

When a child comes to school with a fresh haircut or a tattered book bag,

these events can inspire a p oem . When Michael rode his bike without tr aining

wheels for the first time, this occasion provided a worthwhile topic to write

about. A new baby in a family, a lost tooth, and the death of one student s

father were th e playful or serious inspirat ions for student wr iting.

Says Rotkow: Our classroom reverbera ted with th e stories of our lives as we

wrote, talked, and r eflected abou t who we were, what we did, what we thought,

and how we thou ght about it. We became a com m unity.

ROTKOW, DEBBIE. Two or Three Things I Know For Su re About Helping Studen ts Write

th e Stories of Their Lives.The Quarterly (25) 4.


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National W riting Project

Establish an email dialogue between students from differentschools who are reading the same book.

When high school teacher KAREN MURAR an d college instru ctor E LAINE WARE ,

teacher-consultants with the Western Pennsylvania Wri t ing Project ,discovered stu dents wer e schedu led to read the August Wilson p lay Fences at

the sam e time, they set up email comm unication between stud ents to allow

some teacherless talk about the text.

Rather than typical teacher-led discussion, the project fostered independent

conversation between students. Formal classroom discussion of the play did

not occur until students had completed all email correspondence. Though

teachers were not involved in student online dialogues, the conversations

evidenced the same reading strategies promoted in teacher-led discussion,

including predication, clarification, interpretation, and others.

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MURAR, KAREN, and E LAINE WARE. 1998. Teacher less Talk: Im pression s from E lectronic

Literacy Conversations.The Quarterly(20) 3.


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3Use writing to improve relations among students.

DIANE WAFF , co-director of the Philadelphia Wri t ing Project , taught in an

urba n school where boys outnu m bered girls four to one in h er classroom. The

situation left girls feeling overwhelmed, according to Waff, and their voicesfaded into t he b ackgroun d, overpowered by m ore aggressive m ale voices.

Determined n ot to ignore this un healthy situation, Waff ur ged students to face

the prob lem h ead-on, asking them to wr ite abou t gender-based pr oblems in their

journa ls. She then int rodu ced literatur e that considered relationships between

the sexes, focusing on th em es of rom an ce, love, and m arr iage. Stud ents wrote

in response to works as diverse as de Maup assant s The Necklace and Dean

Myerss Motown and DiDi.

In the beginning there was a great dissonance between male and female

respo nses. Accord ing to Waff, Girls focused on feelings; boys focused on sex,

money, and the fleeting natur e of rom antic attachment. But as the students

continu ed to write abou t and discuss their hon est feelings, they began to notice

that th ey had similar ideas on m any issues. By confronting th ese gender-based

problem s directly, says Waff, the effect was to improve the lives of individu al

studen ts an d th e social well-being of the wider sch ool comm un ity.

WAFF, DIANE. 1995. Romance in the Classroom: Inviting Discourse on Gender and

Power.The Quarterly (17) 2.


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J AN MATSUOKA, a teacher-consultant with the Bay Area Writing Project

(Californ ia), describes a r evision conference she h eld with a th ird grad e E nglishlanguage learner n am ed Sandee, who had written a bout a recent trip to Los

Angeles.

I told her I wanted h er story to have more focus, writes Matsuoka. I could

tell she was confused so I m ade rou gh sketches representing the events of her

trip. I m ade a sm all fram e out of a piece of pap er and placed it down on one of

her dra wingsa sketch she had m ade of a visit with her gran dm other.

Focus, I told h er, mean s writing abou t the m em orab le details of the visit with

your gran dm other, not everything else you d id on th e trip.

Oh, I get it, Sandee smiled, like just on e cartoon, not a wh ole bu nch .

Sandees next draft was more deep than broad.

4Help student writers draw rich chunks of writing fromendless sprawl.

MATSUOKA, JAN. 1998. Revising Revision: How My Students Transformed Writers

Workshop.The Quarterly(20) 1.


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5Work with words relevant to students lives to help thembuild vocabulary.

E ILEEN S IMMONS , a teacher-consultant with the Oklahoma State Univers i ty

Writing Project , knows that the more relevant new words are to students lives, the m ore likely they are to ta ke hold.

In h er high school classroom , she u ses a form of the children s ABC book as a

com m un ity-building project. For each letter of the alphabet, the studen ts find

an appropriately descriptive word for themselves. Students elaborate on the

word by writing sentences and creating an illustration. In the process, they

m ake extensive use of the dictionary and thesau ru s.

One student describes her personality as sometimes caustic, illustrating th e

word with a p hotograph of a bu rning car in a war zone. Her caption explains

that she understands the hurt her burning sarcastic remarks can generate.

S IMMONS, E ILEEN. 2002. Visualizing Voca bu lary.The Quarterly(24) 3.


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6Help students analyze text by asking them to imagine dialoguebetween authors.

J OH N LEVINE, a teacher-consultant with the Bay Area Writing Project

(California), helps his college freshmen integrate the ideas of several writersinto a single analytical essay by asking th em to create a d ialogue am ong tho se

writers.

He tells his stud ents, for instance, imagine you are the m oderator of a panel

discussion on th e topic these writers are discussing. Consider th e three writers

and construct a dialogue among the four voices (the three essayists plus

you).

Levine tells students to format the dialogue as though it were a script. The

essay follows from this prepa ration .

LEVINE, JOH N. 2002. Talking Texts: Writing Dialogue in the College Composition

Classroom.The Quarterly (24) 2.


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7

The following is a group poem created by second grad e student s ofM ICHELLE

FLEER , a teacher-consultant with the Dakota Wri t ing Project (SouthDakota).

Underwater

Crabs crawl patiently along the ocean floor

searching for prey.

Fish sou ndlessly w eave their way throu gh

slippery seaw eedWh ales w hisper to others as they slide

throu gh the salty w ater.

And silent waves w ash in to a dark cave

w here an octopu s is sleeping.

Fleer helped her stu dents get started by findin g a familiar top ic. (In this case her

students had been studying sea life.) She asked them to brainstorm language

related to the sea, allowing them time to list appropriate nouns, verbs, and

adjectives. The students th en used th ese words to create ph rases and u sed the

phr ases to prod uce the poem itself.

As a group , students pu t together wor ds in ways Fleer didn t believe many of

them could have done if they were working on their own, and after creating

several group p oem s, som e studen ts felt confident enough to work alone.

FLEER, M ICHELLE. 2002. Beyond Pink is a Rose.The Quarterly (24) 4.

Spotlight language and use group brainstorming to help studentscreate poetry.


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8Ask students to reflect on and write about their writing.

DOUGLAS J AMES JOYCE , a teacher-consultan t with the Denver Writing Project ,

m akes use of wha t he calls metawriting in h is college writing classes. He sees

m etawriting (writing about wr iting) as a way to help studen ts reduce error s intheir academic prose.

Joyce explains one metawriting strategy: After reading each essay, he selects

one error that occurs frequently in a student s work and points out each

instance in wh ich the error is m ade. He instructs the student to write a on e-

page essay, comparing and contrasting three sources that provide guidance

on th e established u se of tha t par ticular convention, making sur e a variety ofsources a re a vailable.

I want th e studen t to dig into th e topic as deeply as necessary, to come away

with a thorough understanding of the how and why of the usage, and to

und erstand any debate that ma y surroun d the particular usage.

JOYCE, DOUGLAS JAMES. 2002. On the Use of Metawriting to Learn Grammar and

Mechanics.The Quarterly (24) 4.


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9Ease into writing workshops by presenting yourself as a model.

GLORIANNE BRADSHAW, a teacher-consultan t with th e Red River Valley Writing

Project (North Dakota), decided to m ake use of experiences from h er own life

when teaching her first-grad ers how to wr ite.

For examp le, on an overhead tr ansp aren cy she shows a sketch of herself stirring

cookie batter while on vacation. She writes the phrase made cookies under

the sketch. Then she asks student s to help her write a sentence abou t this. She

writes the words who, where, and when . Using these words as prompts, she

and the students construct the sentence, I ma de cookies in th e kitchen in th e

morning.

Next, each student returns to the sketch he or she has made of a summer

vacation a ctivity an d, with her h elp, answers th e sam e questions an swered for

Bradshaws drawing. Then sh e asks them , Tell m e m ore. Do the cookies have

chocolate chips? Does the pizza have pepperoni? These facts lead to other

sentences.

Rather than taking away creativity, Bradshaw believes this kind of structure

gives stud ent s a helpful form at for cr eativity.

BRADSHAW, GLORIANNE . 2001. Back to Squar e One: What to Do When Writing Workshop

Just Doesn t Work.The Quarterly (23) 1.


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10Get students to focus on their writing by holding off on grading.

STEPHANIE WILDER found that the grades she gave her high school students

were getting in th e way of their pr ogress. The weaker stu dents stopp ed trying.

Other students relied on grades as the only standard by which they judgedtheir own work.

I decided to postpone my grading until the portfolios, which contained

a selection of student work, were complete, Wilder says. She continued to

comm ent on papers, encourage revision, and u rge students to meet with h er

for conferences. But she waited to grade th e papers.

It took a wh ile for students to stop leafing to the ends of their papers in search of

a grade, and th ere was some grum bling from stu dents wh o had always received

excellent grades. But she b elieves tha t b ecause sh e was less quick to judge their

work, studen ts were better able to evaluat e their efforts th em selves.

WILDER

, STEPHANIE

. 1997. Prun ing Too E arly: The Thor ny Issue of Grading Stud entWriting.The Quarterly(19) 4.


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11Use casual talk about students lives to generate writing.

E RIN (P IRNOT) CICCONE, teacher-consultant with the Pennsylvania Wri t ing

and Lite ra tur e Pro jec t, found a way to m ake more pr oductive the Monday

morning gab fest she used as a warm-up with her fifth grade students. Sheconceived ofHead line News. As students entered th e classroom on Monday

mornings, they wrote personal headlines about their weekends and posted

them on the bulletin board. A headline might read Fifth-Grader Stranded at

Movie Theatre or Girl Takes on Responsibility as Mother s Helper.

After the head lines ha d been p osted, stud ents ha d a cha nce to guess the stories

behind them . The writers then told the stories behind th eir headlines. As eachstudent had only three minutes to talk, they needed to make decisions about

what was important and to clarify details as they proceeded. They began to

rely on su spense and purposeful ambiguity to h old listeners interest.

On Tuesday, students committed their stories to writing. Because of the

Headline News experience, Ciccones students have been able to generate

writing tha t is focused, detailed, and well ordered.

CICCONE , E RIN (P IRNOT). 2001. A Place for Talk in Writers Workshop. The Quarterly

(23) 4.


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12Give students a chance to write to an audience for real purpose.

P ATRICIA A. SLAGLE , high school teacher and teacher-consultant with the

Louisville Writing Pr oject (Kentucky), understands the difference between

writing for a hypothetical purpo se and writing to an aud ience for real purp ose.She illustra tes the difference by contra sting two assignm ents.

She began with: Imagine you are the drama critic for your local newspaper.

Write a review of an imaginary production of the play we have just finished

studying in class. This prompt asks students to assume the contrived role of

a pro fessiona l writer and dra m a critic. They m ust ad apt to a voice that is not

theirs an d preten d to ha ve knowledge they do not have.

Slagle developed a m ore effective altern ative: Write a letter to th e director of

your local theater company in which you present arguments for producing

the play that we have just finished studying in class. This prompt, Slagle

says, allows the writer her own voice, building into her argument concrete

references to person al experience. Of course, adds Slagle, this prompt wou ld

constitute a uth entic writing only for th ose studen ts who, in fact, would like to

see the play prod uced.

SLAGLE, P ATRICIA A. 1997 . Getting Real: Aut hen ticity in Writing Prom pts.The Quarterly

(19) 3.


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13Practice and play with revision techniques.

MARK F ARRINGTON , college instru ctor an d teach er-consultan t with th e Northern

Virginia Writing Project , believes teaching revision sometimes means

practicing techniques of revision. An exercise like find a place other thanthe first sentence where this essay might begin is valuable becau se it shows

studen t writers th e possibilities tha t exist in wr iting.

For Farr ington s students, practice can sometime turn to play with directions

to:

add five colors

add four a ction verbs

add one metaphor

add five sensory deta ils.

In h is college fiction writing class, Farrington a sks students to cho ose a spot in

the story where the ma in character does something that is crucial to the rest

of the story. At that moment, Farrington says, they must make the characterdo th e exact oppo site.

Playing at revision can lead to insightful surpr ises, Farrington says. When

they come, revision doesn t seem such h ard work anymore.

FARRINGTON, MARK. 1999. Fou r Prin ciples Towar d Teachin g the Craft of Revision.Th e

Quarterly (21) 2.


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14Pair students with adult reading/writing buddies.

BERNADETTE LAMBERT, teacher-consultant with the Kennesaw Mounta in

Writing Project (Georgia), wond ered wha t would hap pen if she ha d her sixth

grade students pair with an adult family mem ber to read a book. She asked thestuden ts abou t the kinds of books they wanted to r ead (mysteries, adventur e,

ghost stories) and the adults about the kinds of books they wanted to read

with th e young p eople (char acter-building values, mu lticultura lism, n o ghost

stories). Using these suggestions for direction, Lambert developed a list of

30 books. From this list, each student-adult pair chose one. They committed

them selves to read an d discuss the book a nd wr ite separ ate reviews.

Most of the students, says Lambert, were proud to share a piece of writing

don e by their adu lt reading bud dy. Several adm itted that they had never before

ha d th is level of intellectual conversation with an adu lt fam ily mem ber.

LAMBERT, BERNADETTE. 1999. You a nd Me and a Book Makes Three. The Quarterly

(21) 3.


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15Teachtension to move students beyond fluency.

SUZANNE LINEBARGER, a co-director of the North ern Cal ifornia Wri t ing Pr oject,

recognized that one element lacking from many of her students stories was

tension. One day, in front of the class, she dem onstra ted tension with a ru bberband. Looped over her finger, the rubber band merely dangled. However,

she told the studen ts, when I stretch it out an d point it (not at a student), the

rubb er ban d sud denly becomes m ore interesting. Its the tension, the poten tial

ener gy, th at rivets your at ten tion . Its the sam e in writing.

Linebarger revised a generic writing prompt to add an element of tension.

The initial prom pt read, Think of a friend wh o is special to you. Write abou tsom ething your friend ha s done for you, you h ave don e for your friend, or you

have don e together.

Linebarger didn t want responses that settled for my best friend was really

good to m e, so du ring the rewrite session we talked abo ut h ow har d it is to

stay friends when m et with a challenge. Stud ents talked about tim es they had

let their friends down or times their friends had let them down, and how th eyhad managed to stay friends in spite of their problems. In other words, we

talked about som e tense situations tha t foun d their way into th eir writing.

LINEBARGER, SUZANNE . 2001. Tensin g Up: Moving Fr om Fluency to Flair.The Quarterly

(23) 3.


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R AY SKJELBRED, middle school teacher at Marin Country Day School, wants

his seventh grade students to listen to language. He wants to begin to traintheir ears by asking them to make lists of wonderful sounding words. This

is strictly a listening game, says Skjelbred. They shouldn t write lunch just

because theyre h un gry. When the collective list is assembled, Skjelbred asks

students to make sentences from some of the words they ve collected. They

m ay use their own word s, borrow from oth er contributors, add oth er words as

necessary, and ch an ge word forms.

Am ong the words on on e students list: tu m ble, detergen t, sift, bu bble, syllable,

creep, eru pt, and volcano. The stu dent wr ites:

A m an loads his laun dry into the tum bling washer, the detergent siftin g

throu gh th e bubbling w ater.

The syllables creep through her teeth.

The fog erupts like a volcano in the du st.

Unexpected words can go together, creating amazing images, says

Skjelbred.

SKJELBRED, RAY. 1997. Sound and Sense: Grammar, Poetry, and Creative Language.

The Quarterly (19) 4.

Encourage descriptive writing by focusing on the soundsof words.


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17Require written response to peers writing.

KATHLEEN OSHAUGHNESSY, a co-director of the National Wri t ing Project of

Acadiana (Louisiana), asks her middle school students to respond to eachothers writing on Post-it Notes. Stud ents attach their com m ents to a piece of

writing u nder consideration.

Ive found that when I require a written response on a Post-it instead of

m erely allowing studen ts to respon d verbally, the respon ders ta ke their du ties

m ore seriously and , with p ractice, the qu ality of their rem arks imp roves. On e

student wrote:

While I was reading your piece, I felt like I was riding a roller coaster. It started

out kinda slow, but you could tell there was som ething exciting com ing up. Bu t

then it m oved real fast and stopped all of a sudden. I alm ost n eeded to read it

again the way you ride a roller coaster over again because it goes too fast.

Says OShaughnessy, This response is certain ly m ore useful to the writer th an

the usual I think you could, like, add some more details, you know? that I

often overhea rd in respon se meetings.

OSHAUGHNESSY, KATHLEEN. 2001. Everything I Know About Teaching Language Arts, I

Learned at the Office Supp ly Store.The Quarterly (23) 2.


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18Make writing reflection tangible.

ANN A COLLINS TREST, director of the South Mississ ippi Wri t ing Project ,

finds she can lead up per elementary school students to better un derstand th e

concept ofreflection if she an chors th e discussion in the concr ete and h elpsstuden ts establish ca tegories for their reflective responses.

She decided to use m irrors to teach th e reflective process. Each student had

one. As the students gazed at their own reflections, she asked this question:

What can you th ink about while looking in the m irror at your own r eflection?

As they an swered, she categorized each r esponse:

I think Im a queenpretending/imagining

I look at m y cavitiesexamining/observing

I think Im having a bad hair day forming opinions

Wh at will I look like when I am old?questioning

My hair is parted in the m iddledescribing

Im thinking about w hen I broke m y nose remembering

I think I look better than m y brothercomparing

Everythin g on m y face looks sad todayexpressing emotion .

Trest talked with students about the categories and invited them to give

persona l examp les of each. Then sh e asked them to look in the mirr ors again,

reflect on their ima ges, and write.

Elemen tary studen ts are literal in th eir thinking, Trest says, but tha t doesnt

m ean they can t be crea tive.

TREST, ANN A COLLINS. 1999. I Was a Jou rn al Topic Ju nkie.The Quarterly (21) 4.


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19Make grammar instruction dynamic.

P HILIP IRELAND, teacher-consultant with the San Marcos Wri t ing Project

(California), believes in active learning. One of his strategies has been to

take his seventh-graders on a preposition walk around the school campus.Walking in pa irs, they tell each oth er wh at th ey are doing:

Im stepping off th e grass.

Im talking to m y friend.

Stud ents soon d iscover tha t everything they do contains prep ositiona l phrases.

I walk am ong my students prom pting answers, Ireland explains.

Im crawling under the tennis net, Amanda proclaims from her hands and

knees. The prepositional phra se is u nder the net.

The preposition? I ask.

Under.

IRELAND, P HILIP. 2003. It Seemed Like a Good Idea at th e Time.The Quarterly (25) 3.


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20Ask students to experiment with sentence length.

K IM STAFFORD, director of the Oregon Wri t ing Project a t Lewis and Clark

College , wan ts his stud ents to discard old notions tha t sentences should be a

certain length. He explains to his students th at a writer s comm and of long andshort sent ences ma kes for a m ore pliable writing repertoire. He describes the

exercise he uses to help students experimen t with senten ce length.

I invite writers to compose a sentence that goes on for at least a pageand

no fair cheating with a sem icolon. Just u se and when you h ave to, or a dash,

or make a list, and keep it going. After years of being told not to, they take

pleasure in writing the greatest run-on senten ces they can.

Then we shake out our writing han ds, take a blank page, and write from the

up per left to the lower right corn er again, but th is tim e letting no senten ce be

longer than four words, but every senten ce mu st have a subject and a verb.

Stafford compar es the first style of sentence construction to a river and the

second to a drum. Writers need both, he says. Rivers have long rhythms.

Drum s roll.

STAFFORD, K IM. 2003. Sentence as River and a s Drum.The Quarterly (25) 3.


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21Help students ask questions about their writing.

J ON I CHANCER , teacher-consultant of the South Coast Wri t ing Project

(California), has paid a lot of attention to the type of questions she wants

her upper elementary students to consider as they re-examine their writing,reflecting on pieces they may make part of their portfolios. Here are some of

the questions:

Wh y did I w rite this p iece? Wh ere did I get m y ideas?

Wh o is the aud ience and h ow did it affect this piece?

Wh at skills did I w ork on in this piece?

Was this piece easy or difficult to w rite? Wh y?Wh at parts did I rework? W hat w ere m y revisions?

Did I try som ethin g new?

Wh at skills did I w ork on in this piece?

Wh at elem ents of writers craft enh anced m y story?

Wh at m ight I change?

Did som ething I read influ ence m y writing?

Wh at did I learn or w hat d id I expect the reader to learn?Wh ere will I go from here? Will I pu blish it? S hare it? Expan d it? Toss it? File it?

Chan cer cautions that these questions shou ld n ot be considered a reflection

checklist, rath er they are questions that seem to be add ressed frequen tly when

writers tell the stor y of a p articular piece.

CHANCER, JONI. 2001. The Teach ers Role in Portfolio Assessment. In The Whole Story:

Teachers Talk About Portfolios, edited by Mary Ann Smith and Jane Juska. Berkeley,

California: Nation al Writing Project.


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22Challenge students to find active verbs.

NANCY LILLY, co-directo r of the Greater New Orleans Wri t ing Pr oject, wanted

her fourth an d fifth grade studen ts to breath e life into th eir nonfiction writing.

She thought th e student who wrote this paragraph could do better:

The jagu ar is the biggest and strongest cat in the rainforest. The jaguars jaw is strong

enough to crush a turtles sh ell. Jaguars also have very pow erfu l legs for leapin g from

branch to branch to chase prey.

Building on an idea from Stephanie Harvey (Nonfiction Matters, Stenhouse,

1998) Lilly introd uced the con cept ofnoun s as stuff and verbs as wha t stuff

does.

In a brainstorm ing session r elated to the stud ents study of the rain forest, the

class sup plied th e following a ssistance t o th e writer:

Stuff/Nouns What S tuff Does/Verb s

jaguar leaps, poun ces

jaguars legs pum p

jaguars teeth crush

jaguars mou th devours

This was just the help the writer needed to create the following revised

paragraph:

As the sun disappears from the heart of the forest, the jagu ar leaps through th e

u nderbrush , pum ping its pow erfu l legs. It spies a gharial gliding down the river. The

ju ngle cat pou nces, cru shin g the turtle w ith h is teeth, devou ring the reptile with pleasu re.

LILLY, NANCY. Dead or Alive: How Will Your Students Nonfiction Writing Arrive?

The Quarterly (25) 4.


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23Require students to make a persuasive written argument insupport of a final grade.

For a final exam, SARAH LORENZ, a teacher-consultant with the Eas te rn

Michigan Writing Project , asks her high school students to make a writtenargum ent for the grade th ey think th ey shou ld receive. Drawing on wor k they

have done over the semester, students make a case for how much they have

learn ed in th e writing class.

The key to convincing m e, says Lorenz, is the u se of detail. They can t simply

say they have im proved as writersthey ha ve to give exam ples and even qu ote

their own writingThey cant just say something was helpfulthey have totell m e why they thought it was impor tan t, how their thinking changed, or how

they applied th is learn ing to everyday life.

LORENZ, SARAH. 2001. Beyond Rhetoric: A Reflective Persuasive Final Exam for the

Writing Classroom.The Quarterly (23) 4.


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24Ground writing in social issues important to students.

J E AN H ICKS , director, and TIM J OHNSON , a co-director, both of the Louisville

Writing Pr oject (Kentu cky), have developed a wa y to help h igh school studen ts

create brief, effective dramas about issues in their lives. The class, workingin groups, decides on a theme such as jealousy, sibling rivalry, competition,

or teen drinking. Each group develops a scene illustrating an aspect of this

chosen theme.

Consider ing the th em e of sibling rivalry, for instance, stud ents iden tify possible

scenes with topics such as I Had It First (competing for family resources)

and Calling in th e Troops (tattling). Students then set up the circumstancesand chara cters.

Hicks and Jo hn son give each of the characters a d ifferent color packet of Post-

it Notes. Each stu dent develops and posts dialogue for h is or her char acter. As

the scene emerges, Post-its can be added, moved, and deleted. They remind

students of the conventions of dram a such as conflict and resolution. Scenes,

when a cted ou t, are lim ited to 10 minu tes.

It s not so mu ch about th e genre or the produ ct as it is about creating a culture

that supports th e thinking and learning of writers, write Hicks and Joh nson.

H ICKS, JEAN and TIM JOHNSON. 2000. Staging Learning: The Plays the Thing. Th e

Quarterly (22) 3.


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25Encourage the framing device as an aid to cohesion in writing.

ROMANA H ILLEBRAND, a teacher-consultan t with the Nor thwes t In land Wri t ing

Project (Idaho), asks her university students to find a literary or historical

reference or a personal narrative that can provide a fresh way into and outof their writing, surrounding it much like a window frame surrounds a glass

pane.

Hillebran d p rovides th is exam ple:

A student in her research class wrote a paper on the relationship between

humans and plants, beginning with a reference to the nursery rhyme, Ring

around the rosy, a pocket full of posies She explained the rhymes as

originating with the practice of masking the stench of death with flowers

during the Black Plague. The student finished the paper with the sentence,

Withou t plan ts, life on Ear th w ould cease to exist as we know it; ashes, ashes

we all fall down .

Hillebrand concludes that linking the introduction and the conclusion helps

un ify a paper and satisfy the reader.

H ILLEBRAND, ROMANA. 2001. It s a Frame Up: Helping Students Devise Beginning and

Endings.The Quarterly (23) 1.


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26Use real world examples to reinforce writing conventions.

SUZANNE CH E RRY, director of the Swam p Fox Writ ing Project (South Carolina),

has her own way of dramatizing the comma splice error. She brings to class

two p ieces of wire, the last inch of each exposed. She tells her college studentsWe need to join these pieces of wire together right n ow if we are to b e able

to watch our favorite TV show. What ca n we d o? We could use som e tape, but

that would probably be a mistake as the puppy could easily eat through the

connect ion. By splicing the wires in th is way, we ar e creatin g a fire hazard.

A better con nection, the stu dents u sually suggest, would be to u se one of those

electrical connectors th at look like pen ca ps.

Now, Cherry says (often to th e accomp an imen t of mu ltiple groan s), lets turn

these wires into sentences. If we simply splice them together with a comma,

the equivalent of a piece of tape, we create a weak connection, or a comma

splice error. Wha t then would be th e gram m atical equivalent of the electrical

connector? Think conjunctionand, but, or. Or try a semicolon. All of these

show relationships between sentences in a way that the comma, a device fortapin g clauses together in a slapda sh m ann er, does not.

Ive been teaching writing for many years, Cherry says. And I now realize

the m ore able we are to relate the concepts of writing to real worldexperience,

the m ore su ccessful we will be.

CHERRY, SUZANNE . 2004. Keeping the Comma Splice Queen Happy. The Voice

(9) 1.


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27Think like a football coach.

In addition to his work as a high school teacher of writing, DAN H OLT, a co-

director of the Third Coast Wri t ing Project (Michigan), spent 20 years

coaching football. While doing the latter, he learned quite a bit about doingthe form er. Here is some of what he found out:

The writing teacher can t stay on the sidelines. When I m odeled for m y players,

they knew what I wanted them to do. The same involvement, he says, is

required to su ccessfully teach wr iting.

Like the coach, the writing teacher shou ld praise strong perform ance rather than

focus on the negative. Statements such as Wow, that was a killer block, orThat paragraph was tight will tu rn butterball ninth -grade b oys into varsity

linem en an d insecure adolescents into aspiring poets.

The w riting teacher shou ld apply the KIS S theory: Keep it sim ple stu pid. Holt

explains for a freshman quarterback, audibles (on-field commands) are best

used w ith car e un til a player h as rea ched a higher skill level. In wr iting class,

a student who h as never written a poem needs to start with sm all verse form ssuch as a chinquapin or ha iku.

Practice and routin e are im portant both for football players and for w riting

students, but football players and writers also need the adrenaline rush of

the big game and th e fina l dra ft.

H OLT, DAN. 1999. What Coaching Football Taught Me About Teaching Writing. Th e

Voice (4) 3.

N ti l W iti P j t

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28Allow classroom writing to take a page from yearbook writing.

High school teacher J ON APPLEBY noticed that when yearbooks fell into

students hands my curriculum got dropped in a h eartbeat for spirited words

scribbled over ph otos. Appleby wondered, How can I m ake my classroom asfascinating an d consum ing as the yearbook?

Here are som e ideas that yearbook writing inspired:

Take pictures, put them on the bulletin boards, and have students write

captions for them. Then design small descriptive writing assignments using

the ph otograph s of events such as th e prom an d hom ecoming. Afterwards, ask

students to choose quotes from th ings they have read that represent wh at th ey

feel and think and put th em on th e walls.

Check in about students lives. Recognize achievements and individuals the

way that yearb ook writers direct attention to each oth er. Ask students to write

down m em ories and simply, joyfully share them . As yearbook wr iting u sually

does, insist on a sense of tomor row.

APPLEBY, JON . 2001. The Student Yearbook: A Guide to Writing and Teaching. Th e

Voice (6) 3.

30 Ideas for TeachingW rit ing

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29Use home language on the road to Standard English.

E ILEEN KENNEDY, special educa tion tea cher a t Medger Evers College, works with

nat ive speakers of Caribb ean Creole who ar e prepa ring to teach in New York

City. Sometim es she encour ages these studen ts to dr aft writing in their n ative

Creole. The a dditional cha llenge becom es to re-draft th is writing, rendered in

patois, into Standard English.

She finds th at na rra tives involving im m igran t Caribbean n atives in u nfam iliar

situationsbuying a refrigerator, for instancelead to inspired writing. In

addition, some stud ents expressed th eir th oughts m ore proficiently in Stan dar d

En glish after drafting in their verna culars.

KENNEDY, E ILEEN. 2003. Writing in Home Dialects: Choosing a Written Discourse in a

Teacher Education Class.The Quarterly (25) 2.


30


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30

J IM WILCOX, teacher-consultan t with th e Oklahom a Writ ing Project , requires

his college student s to volunteer at a local facility that serves the com m un ity,any place from the Special Olympics to a burn unit. Over the course of

their tenure with the organization, students write in a number of genres: an

objective report that describes the appearance and activity of the facility, a

persona l interview/profile, an evaluation essay that r equires studen ts to set up

criteria by which to assess this kind of organization, an investigative report

tha t includ es inform ation from a second sour ce, an d a letter to the editor of a

campu s newspaper or other pub lication.

Wilcox says, Besides improving their researching skills, students learn that

their community is indeed full of problems and frustrations. They also learn

that their own talents and time are valuable assets in solving some of the

worlds problem sone life at a time.

WILCOX, JIM. 2003. The Spirit of Volunteerism in E nglish Com position.The Quarterly

(25) 2.

Introduce multigenre writing in the context of communityservice.


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2003 by the NATIONAL WRITING P ROJECt

All righ ts reserved

Reprinted 2004

Compiled and edited by ART P ETERSON.

Designed by KAREN KARTEN.

3: Rom an ce in th e Classroom: Inviting Discour se on Gender an d Power by

Diane Waff is repr inted from The Voice of th e Philadelph ia Writin g Project(3)

1. Copyright Winter 1994.

11: A Place for Talk in Wr iters Workshop by Erin (Pirn ot) Ciccone is

reprinted from The Penn sylvania W riting and Literatu re Project N ewsletter(21)2. Copyright 2000.

12: A version ofGetting Real: Can a Writing Prom pt Be Auth entic? by

Patricia Slagle first appeared in The Lou isville Writing Project Network N ews.

20: Senten ce as River an d as Drum by Kim Stafford is repr inted from Th e

Mu ses Am on g Us: Eloqu ent Listenin g and Other Pleasu res of the Writers Craft.

University of Georgia Press: Athens, Geor gia. Copyright 2003 by Kim

Sta fford . All rights r eserved.

30: The Spirit of Volunteerism in E nglish Com position by Jim Wilcox is

reprinted from Write Angles II I: S till More S trategies for Teachin g Com posit ion .

Copyright 2002 by the Oklahom a Departm ent of Edu cation.


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