Today I'm sharing 10 little knowledge nuggets all related to teaching writing. My challenge to you is to latch on to one or two of these “Ah-Ha” moments for teaching writing. Spend the day thinking about a few ideas that really resonate with you as a teacher of writing. Decide how you can expand these thoughts and implement them into your class to help your young writers today. Here we go!

1. This Idea comes from Carl Anderson's work in the book called “Accessing Writers”. He says “Let's stop calling the time before a rough draft pre-writing. Our students are actually writing here! Instead, let's call it rehearsing.” I love this idea of shifting from a pre-writing mindset to a rehearing mindset. The students really are writing during the rough draft stage so why call it pre-writing? Rehearsing is a much better fit. 

2. What do we as teachers understand about writing, and can we bring to the table to teach our students about writing? Think about that today. What do you really understand about writing and what do you actually teach your students about writing? 

3. What does an effective process look like? For you personally what does your process look like? Take some time to think about this so that you can transition this into teaching your young writers about the process of writing.   

4. Let’s take some time to watch our students write and access what they do. Try taking some time today to just step back and watch. Be an observer. Are they re-reading their work? Do they spend time rehearsing or jump straight into a rough draft? How is there writing stamina?  Are they writing for more than five minutes or is it five minutes and then they're done? These are some great example questions we can find the answers to by observing our students. 

5. The most important thing we can teach our young learners is to see themselves as writers. We want them to see themselves as real writers who have something important to say that matters to this world and no-one else can say it the way they can. Start addressing your students as writers. 

6. As teachers, we need to accept that writing can get messy. We have to be okay with lots of marks, fixes, corrections, and do-overs. We can't just focus on conventions. 

7. Just like students learn math differently, they all have their own approach to the writing process. We need to teach different ways writers write and give students the option to try out what works for them as a writer. 

8. To have an effective writing process kids need flexibility. They need to be able to try out new approaches to their writing. 

9. Our young writers must have an audience and a sense of purpose so that they can see their writing as not just another assignment, but rather as something of great value for themselves and for their future audience. 

10. Teachers need to be writers in order to teach writers. We cant lead students where we ourselves haven’t gone. So make sure you spend time writing on your own as well! Maybe even have some fun writing with your students. 

I hope this chat gave you some ideas to take and sit on about how you can improve your ability to teach writing. If you would like to check out my line of writing activities you can click HERE! If you enjoyed today’s lesson you can find this post and many more on iTunes, Spotify, or Alexa Briefings. Click here to listen

*CLIPART FROM A SKETCHY GUY. VIEW HIS STORE AT HTTPS://WWW.TEACHERSPAYTEACHERS.COM/STORE/A-SKETCHY-GUY

Happy teaching!
Jen

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