Over the years, I’ve seen many classes where students seem to write about anything that they want to write about. And there is always some kind of research that can support this unstructured, unfocused writing activity. On the other hand, the research on teaching writing also makes this clear:
“Experiments over the last 50 years have shown negligible improvements in the quality of student writing as a result of grammar instruction.” (Becoming a Nation of Readers, National Institute of Education, 1985.)
“Decades of research (Elly, 1979, Hillocks, 1986, Freedman, 1993, Freedman and Daiute, 2001) have shown that instructional strategies such as isolated skill drills fail to improve student writing.”
Today, I’m going to explore and reflect on what we could call “student-owned writing instruction” or “unfocused, random writing instruction” by way of nine mini-essays:
1. Starting From Scratch: Learning How to Teach Writing
2. Does All Writing Improve Student Writing?
3. Student-Owned Writing
4. Five Questions Teachers Should Ask Before They Let Their Students Write About Anything
5. The Little Tan Journal Trap
6. Drop-of-a-Hat Writers
7. Teacher in Charge: Running a Writing Classroom
8. Five Benefits of Student-Created and Student-Owned Writing Prompts
9. Five Problems with Student-Created Writing Prompts
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Starting From Scratch: Learning How to Teach Writing
I began my teaching career at the end of a bilingual debacle. As a result, my first class had shockingly low reading and writing skills. Most of my third-grade students were true non-writers. Additionally, I entered the classroom full time with no experience or training except for a few months of substitute teaching. Put simply, I didn’t know anything about teaching writing.
So, I began a journey to figure out what worked in teaching writing. My goal wasn’t to teach writing exactly. I just wanted my students to write reasonably well across the curriculum. Once again, many of my students were non-writers, and when they did write, it was poor in every aspect.
We had some kind of writing curriculum in the classroom that I now call a prompt-based writing curriculum. It was basically a collection of writing prompts stretched out to form a curriculum of some sort. As the curriculum did not teach anything concrete about writing, my reaction was, “Why would I want my students to write about this?” I wanted to teach my students something that would improve their writing NOW and that would show up in their daily writing across the curriculum.
I ended up focusing on an endless list of writing and grammar skills taught primarily through isolated skill drills, which the research says doesn’t improve student writing. Having said that, it has always been common sense to me that students must write to improve their writing. Students need to practice applying their growing collection of writing skills and writing knowledge in sustained writing. After all, students can’t really learn to write by filling in blanks.
Doris Lessing, 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature Winner, put it this way: “You can only learn to be a better writer by actually writing.” Along the same line, it’s been a popular writing maxim for many decades that a writer must write a million words to reach competency.
So, if you are teaching isolated skill drills, you still need to have your student write. But what will your students write about? I will reflect on some of my experiences related to this topic as I learned how to teach writing. Additionally, I will direct you to some resources that will help answer that question.
Over the years, I’ve developed many systems and routines that help me teach writing across the curriculum quite effectively. To be clear, Pattern Based Writing: Quick & Easy Essay is the most valuable tool in my teaching writing tool belt. It creates a foundation and framework that makes teaching easy!
Furthermore, I provide many free teaching-writing resources that help teachers bring focus and purpose to their writing instruction. Here are a few of them:
1. Nine Strategies for Teaching Writing Across the Curriculum
2. The Definitive List of Writing and Grammar Skills
3. Released Writing Prompts for State Testing
4. How to Create Writing Prompts and Writing Assignments to Teach Writing Across the Curriculum
Does All Writing Improve Student Writing?
Teachers and students have a great deal of pressure on them these days to get results. This pressure comes from many different sources. As a consequence, class time is extremely valuable. So I ask this question: Is it a wise use of time to let your students write about anything?
Certainly, the answer to this question depends on many things.
All writing helps to create fluent writers—and that’s a good thing. However, not all writing improves students’ writing beyond that aspect. To be certain, careless and disorganized writing doesn’t improve student writing. In fact, since students are practicing careless and disorganized writing, they become experts at that kind of writing. I cover that in depth in my free eBook Nine Strategies for Teaching Writing Across the Curriculum.
Student-Owned Writing
Modern writing instruction encourages teachers to foster students’ ownership of their writing. Rubrics, checklists, the writing process, and Writer’s Workshop all encourage students to take ownership of their writing.
Clearly, when we let students choose their own topics to write about and create their own writing assignments, it helps foster student ownership of their writing. Unfortunately, it often doesn’t foster students learning to write well. This kind of writing doesn’t teach anything concrete about writing. I offer an alternative that also creates student ownership of writing. You can read all about it in my free eBook How to Create Scaffolded, Student-Owned Writing Assignments with Your Students to Teach Writing Across the Curriculum.
Five Questions Teachers Should Ask Before They Let Their Students Write About Anything
Here are five questions that teachers should consider before they let their students choose their own topic to write about:
1. Will your students do their best to apply proper writing skills and create effective writing?
2. Does the writing have an academic or educational purpose?
3. Will students learn something about writing?
4. Will the writing improve the students’ writing in a measurable way and in a timely manner?
5. Will the writing help students learn content across the curriculum?
Ideally, we want the answer to all of those questions to be YES. If the answer to all of them is NO, that’s a problem. It’s busy work. Although students may enjoy the writing activity, it’s probably not an effective use of classroom time.
Do you teach beginning writers or struggling writers? If you do, be sure to check out Pattern Based Writing: Quick & Easy Essay on the homepage!
The Little Tan Journal Trap
If you are interested in journal writing or adding low-stakes writing to your collection of tools, be sure to check out my free eBook Multi-Purpose Journal and Learning Log: Ten Types of Writing. In this eBook, I discuss many ways to use journals and learning logs with purpose. This stands in strong contrast to how I was introduced to journal writing.
When I began my first year of teaching, I didn’t have any teacher training or experience, except for three months of substitute teaching. Although I didn’t know much (or anything) about teaching, the only thing that truly confused and frustrated me was my students writing. It was terrible.
As I looked for solutions, teachers repeatedly suggested those little tan journals as if they were a solution for terrible writing.
I ended up experimenting with those little tan journal on and off for a couple of years. Although they weren’t a complete waste of time, they didn’t improve student writing significantly. I experimented using them in various ways, and I certainly went through stages where I encouraged my students to pick a topic, any topic, and begin writing. Students frequently wrote about whatever they wanted to write about. Although the little tan journals did get many of my non-writers writing, they didn’t do much more than that. Many students simply practiced writing poorly.
One thing that stuck with me from my early experiences teaching writing (including my little tan journal experiences) was this concept: Drop-of-a-Hat Writers. I still want my students to be able to pick up a pencil and start writing without a prompt of any kind—i.e., at the drop of a hat.
Drop-of-a-Hat Writers
When students wrote in those little tan journals, the first rule was simple: “I want to see that pencil moving.” By the end of the year, every student could choose a topic, pick up a pencil, and write—at the drop of a hat. And that is a worthwhile skill.
I still train my students to be drop-of-a-hat writers. I want them to be able to write about so-called anything at the drop of a hat. In my opinion, we have taught our students something that is fundamentally untrue about writing if we have taught them to be afraid to choose a random topic and write.
Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) had every reason to be afraid to publish his famous book. Whereas Seinfeld was supposedly a TV show about nothing, Montaigne’s book was truly a book about anything. His book was titled Essais, which meant, “attempts, trials, or tests.” And yes, it was the first book of essays. With that one famous book, he invented a word (essay) and an entire genre of writing (essays) that remains a cornerstone of writing today.
Wait! Was it really a book about anything? You be the judge. Here are a few titles of his essays: Of Sleep, Of Smells, Of Solitude, and Of Thumbs. Finally! Finally, someone addressed the much-neglected topic of thumbs!
My goal is to improve my students’ independent writing across the curriculum. Furthermore, I want to see results on state and district writing assessments.
Although we don’t have much time to write about thumbs, or even tables or chairs, I want my students to know that we all have the ability to write about anything. Anything and everything is interesting enough to write about if one is willing to think deeply about the topic.
Drop-of-a-hat writers own their writing even when they are addressing a writing prompt on a state writing assessment. They grasp that they are the source!
Teacher in Charge: Running a Writing Classroom
Like writing itself, running a writing classroom is a process of making choices. On my website, I provide many free eBooks related to running a writing classroom that should help teachers create various systems and routines that work for them. Furthermore, I discuss writing prompts in depth in various places on my website.
Throughout my website, I encourage an active approach to teaching writing, along with fostering student ownership of writing. Put simply, I want my students to care more about their writing than I do. It doesn’t happen overnight, but it happens.
I also encourage teachers to take charge of teaching writing. I put it this way: Writing teachers are the writing curriculum. Teachers must bring something to the table. Why? A curriculum can’t read our students’ writing and tell us what to say. We take charge of our students writing so that we can place them in charge of their writing.
So even as you involve your students in creating student-owned writing prompts, stay in control of what’s going on. Teachers should create a strong educational purpose for every piece of writing.
Five Benefits of Student-Created and Student-Owned Writing Prompts
1. When student-owned and student-created writing prompts are part of a writing teacher’s arsenal of tools, the teacher can find many more opportunities for students to write and to teach writing. We can classify many of these opportunities as low-stakes writing, which the research says is an important component in teaching writing.
2. Student-created prompts give students the freedom to develop their own writing voice and their own style of writing.
3. Student-created prompts teach students self-reliance and help create independent writers. If students don’t learn how to choose topics to write about, the writing battle is lost before it’s even begun.
4. Students have the freedom to choose a subject that they are an expert in: e.g., their lives, experiences, and opinions, etc. This means that students will have more things to write about, and therefore, will write more and will write more often. This will give them confidence in their ability to write. Students will develop various writing skills faster since they write more and do not have to learn as much content just to engage in the writing process.
5. Many students enjoy the creative freedom. For many students, this is how they will develop a true love for writing.
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Five Problems with Student-Created Writing Prompts
As you will see, I can’t help but offer solutions to the problems. When you solve a problem, it ceases to be a problem.
1. Some students will choose to write about the same thing (or a small list of things) almost every time. If teachers don’t at least loosely track their students’ writing, some students will repeatedly write the same essay or story. Truthfully, I was shocked when I first caught on to this tricky loophole. I was looking at two pieces of writing that were created months apart that were essentially the same. I wondered, “How long has this been going on?”
2. Some students will consistently choose to write about lightweight topics without exploring any real deep thoughts. As an example, a student may choose topics like these: video game #1, video game #2, movie #1, video game #3, movie #2, TV show #1, etc.
Although beginning writers and struggling writers benefit from having opportunities to write about the familiar, many students need to be encouraged to stretch their thinking and choose different types of topics.
3. Students may perceive this kind of writing as busy work. However, there are ways to minimize this effect. If teachers have created a “Classroom Full of Writers,” every piece of writing is important. The easiest and quickest way to make a piece of writing important is to have students quickly read it to at least one other person.
4. Time and Educational Purpose: It’s certainly more challenging to create a concrete educational purpose when students write about whatever they want to write about. On the other hand, if we don’t teach students how to choose powerful and interesting topics independently, we will have neglected one of the most important aspects of writing.
5. Busy Work: As mentioned above, students may perceive this kind of writing as busy work. However, teachers may actually use this kind of writing as busy work or believe that simply having students write teaches writing. With so much to teach these days and with so much accountability, teachers should figure out to use their time wisely and get results in teaching writing.
