Teaching WritingTeaching students how to write is a difficult challenge, and probably my biggest challenge as a teacher. Some students will be fine with their writing skills whereas others will find it to be extremely difficult. Poetry has always been something that I have seen students struggle with because they don't know where to begin. Often, students need some sort of prompt to help them begin a story instead of just being given a subject to write about. Journaling a few days a week will most likely always be done in my classroom, regardless of the grade I am teaching. Journaling lets students relax and write informally, without worrying about including every single grammatical mark. This allows them to put their thoughts down on paper and gets them warmed up before the actual writing activity in class.
I will provide a prompt each time I assign a writing activity or a writing assignment for homework. This will gently guide students towards a subject they can write about and a possible story line they can elaborate on. Sometimes, a simple prompt takes the pressure off of my students and they can concentrate on the content of their text rather than trying to figure out a really good story line the teacher will like. I struggled with writing constantly in school, so I know what it feels like to be a struggling writer. I am thankful for having that experience because now I feel that I can connect with my students better. Besides giving my students a prompt to work with, I would allow my students to respond to a given text as if they were a character from their novel. This encourages students to think critically about a text and have a conversation with the author. To view my prompt I gave my students in block to help them with using quotation marks, please click here. If you would like to see an author response for the lyrics to Dear Ophelia, please click here. |