Writing to learn requires clear goals and expectations, a strong sense or purpose, a good understanding of audience and lots and lots of explanation, demonstration, and guided practice. Many times teachers assign writing assignments for students and do not provide any examples or workshops to help improve student writing. In order to produce successful writers we have to teach our students how to search to find information, how to write and how to revise/edit their writing. In doing this we are preparing our students to go through the writing process. The Guided Writing Procedure is one that I would use in my classroom. The author states that it has been useful with English Language Learners, but I believe that it would work with all students. This procedure gives the students an opportunity to make an outline mentally before they make one on paper; determining if the topic they have selected will work for them. If I this had been used in my high school classes I don’t think that I would have struggled with writing so much.
Journals are critical in teaching students to write, it allows them to practice writing without worrying about grammatical errors. It also is a way for the teacher to find how well her students write and what she needs to teach them about writing. It is a type of informal assessment. I disagree with giving students prompts to write about, I believe that if we let the students write about what they want to then we will really see who they are as writers. I can remember being given writing prompts in high school and drawing a blank. I would struggle to write a paragraph and when I would go back to reread it I would find that I repeated myself a few times. Journals should not be graded for grammatical errors; they should be graded for completion. Teachers should use journals to have writing conferences with students and as a way to measure their writing from the beginning to the end of the semester.
“Teachers do not help when they only mark problems with a red pen. Instead it is important to show students how to address these problems. “ It is discouraging to students when they get a paper back with a lot of red marks on it with no explanation or suggestions for improvements. Feedback should be given to the students in a timely manner and with suggestions or tip for improvement. When feedback is given we should give the students particular areas that they need to work on. This type of feedback is useful in conferences with students, it will allow the student and teacher to talk through the errors and develop strategies to help improve their writing in the future. In my classroom, I plan to develop a feedback book for class so that I can provide my students with feedback in all areas. As teachers we should be able to receive feedback from our students as well.