Hi there,
I'm wondering about the writing process. In general, do different "stages" work for kids? Or is it too step by step? Sometimes I think that a lot of my students do really well with the step by step idea and others just want to write the whole thing one time and be done. Any ideas for how to work this out for all my students without losing track of where individual kids are at?
I have a feeling that if I say that writing the piece one time without any kind of brainstorming...then that is all I'll get. And I do think that brainstorming or prewriting of some kind is helpful a lot of the time.
Hmmm.... Ideas?
Thanks!
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Hmmm…good question. My take on it is that it definitely helps most kids to work in stages, but we as teachers sometimes get too rigid about what those stages are and how they should look. To put it differently; all writing involves process, even writing that seems all-at-one-time; it’s just that usually,“stages” are not explicitly separate and distinct, but rather recursive and intertwined. I think that the more self-aware a writer is about his/her process, the better. But when we teach Process as a uniform set of rules that must be followed by every student, we run the danger of making writing more formulaic.
ReplyDeleteAn alternative (or supplement) is to get students to write reflectively on their own process. What did they do when (and/or before) they started to write? Did they write straight through, or stop and start? Did they get stuck? If so, how did they get restarted (if at all)? These reflections can then be evaluated: is the writer satisfied with their process? Do they want or need strategies for certain stages? You might devise a series of guided questions for students along these lines and have them answer them after a writing assignment.
As a creative writing professor told me in college, "Writing is rewriting what you've already rewritten." I have plenty of students who also want to just write it once and be done with it, and I'm requiring everyone to do TWO drafts for formal papers. They complain, but I've been pretty successful at investing them by sharing stories of my own experiences with writing.
ReplyDeleteI tell them that I was just like them, that I could write the whole paper in one go, and still get good grades...until I went to college. That approach doesn't work on a 15 page research paper. I tell them how I wish that someone had forced me to do outlines and drafts on my papers in high school, because I had to learn them on my own in college.
I give them a packet that has documents for each part of the writing process. For the Regents essay we just completed, we did notes/annotating, main idea finding, creating thesis statements, creating an outline, rough draft, and final. All students must create an outline, but the other pieces are optional. I also show them exactly how the different things help with the final product. Also, I do require that they use the same process each time the first few times (3 to be exact), because they learn how to modify the different steps for themselves when they must complete it more than once.
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