HOW TO TEACH.......

HOW TO TEACH WRITING.

The most important factor in writing exercises is that students need to be personally involved in order to make the learning experience of lasting value. Encouraging student participation in the exercise, while at the same time refining and expanding writing skills, requires a certain pragmatic approach. The teacher should be clear on what skills he/she is trying to develop. Writing is a complex process that allows writers to explore thoughts and ideas, and make them visible and concrete. A process approach to writing helps students to write as professional authors do, choosing their own topics and genres, and writing from their own experiences or observations. A writing process approach requires that teachers give students greater responsibility for, and ownership of, their own learning. Students make decisions about genre and choice of topics, and collaborate as they write.

Teachers who view writing as a process recognize the following:

-Writing is recursive in nature; the writer moves within the components as necessary, perhaps from pre-writing to drafting, then back to pre-writing again, then forward to editing and back to drafting before polishing a piece for sharing or publication. For some writers, drafting may occur during revision; for others, revision and editing may be naturally combined.

-Both the process and product of writing should be assessed and evaluated, allowing students and teachers to focus on and assess the learning that takes place during writing, rather than trying to ascertain what has been learned from the finished product only.

-The basic components of the writing process are similar from writer to writer, but each writer is unique and develops an individual writing process.

-Writing abilities are largely acquired by practice and frequent writing. While instruction may be required about some writing skills and knowledge, it must be conducted within the context of students' writing and should not be broken into isolated sub-skills, which are less likely to transfer to the students' writing. (It should also be kept in mind that many writers attribute their skill to frequent and varied reading.).

- Encouraging students to express their ideas and meaning in the form of whole "text" is preferable to focusing at domestically upon single, isolated parts of language.

-Creating meaning takes time and cannot be done on command.

-Although writing is a solitary activity for most writers, the social aspects of collaboration make writing groups appropriate for Middle Level students. However, for some students writing will always be private and solitary and teachers should be sensitive to this when planning group activities.

During the writing process, students engage in pre-writing, planning, drafting, and post-writing activities. However, as the writing process is recursive in nature, they do not necessarily engage in these activities in that order.

The following describes the writing process:

Pre-writing: using pre-writing techniques to gather ideas; brainstorm, think/reflect, talk/remember, jot ideas/draw, read/research, observe/view.

Planning: using structures to organize for writing; outline, map/diagram, construct story frames, consider purpose, audience, point of view, and format.

Drafting: putting ideas down on paper; exploring new ideas during writing; write rough drafts, confer with peers and teacher, revise for meaning (at the idea level), proofread and edit for mechanical and conventional accuracy.

Post-writing; polish for final draft, share or publish, select for portfolio assessment.

Assessing and evaluating; assess continuously throughout the process, evaluate process and product

It is important for teachers to recognize that becoming an effective, independent writer takes time and practice.

Read to your students, no matter how old they are, so that they know what high-quality writing sounds like. Utilize a list such as the one linked below to find books that focus on one or two characteristics of quality writing. Before reading the book, introduce a characteristic of writing, such as unique word choice, and then ask students to listen for samples of it in the book as you read. Later, have them mimic the characteristic of the book you read in a creative writing piece of their own, focusing on improving it in their writing.

Write poetry with your students, the short, fun nature of some poems makes them perfect for the hesitant beginning writer. Start with something simple such as one-verse, simple ABAB pattern rhymes where every other line ends with a rhyming word. Always write an example with your students on the board, write letters. Students love writing notes, so formalize this and teach students how to write a proper letter. Give students a meaningful task that requires writing a letter.

Choose some familiar fairy tales, stories or nursery rhymes. Write a list and ask students to tell you from whose point of view the story is written. Discuss which story elements tell you who is telling the story

Use circle-writing activities from time to time for a quick, fun and non-threatening creative writing exercise.

Tips & Warnings;

Use a word wall with different list categories such as seeing words, hearing words, tasting words, family words, action words, feeling words. Teach children to think about an object or place through all their senses when describing it. How does it feel, taste, smell, sound and look.