A New Year for Reluctant Writers

If your first semester with students has you convinced that they can't or won't write, a new semester offers a fresh start and an opportunity to engage those reluctant writers. I am convinced that all students have something to say - and will say it if we can find the prompts that engage them.

Kelly Gallagher (2006) claims that in order to get his students to write he must "first work on breaking down the negativity that many of my students carry with them regarding writing...Job one is to get students interested in writing. Until students warm up to writing they will never work hard developing their writing skills...I want them to have tons of safe practice under their belts."

This post will offer some safe practice ideas. Future posts will discuss how to offer some choice in writing assignments. I will also provide text structures that have prompted some powerful student writing

Power Writing Rounds

Jeff Anderson, in 10 Things Every Writer Needs to Know, offers a first chapter on getting and keeping writers motivated. His Power Writing activity diminishes the "I can't" voice. Betsy Quist comments on the strategy here; you can find several more takes on Power Writing by Googling Jeff Anderson and Power Writing.

• Teacher displays two words.
• Students select one.
• Teacher says, "Write as much as you can, as fast as you can, as well as you can in one minute. Go!"
• Students write for one minute.
• Teacher calls time: "Stop writing. Draw a line underneath what you just wrote. Count the number of words you wrote."
• Students record word count under the line.
• Teacher records class results for each round on chart.
• Repeat for a total of three rounds.

Free-writing

Many of us have discovered that beginning the class period with free-writing moves students toward believing they are writers. Natalie Goldberg, author of Writing Down the Bones, offers the following rules for a free-writing session:

• Set a time limit.
• Keep your hand writing until the time is up. No pausing.
• Pay no attention to grammar, spelling, punctuation, neatness, or style.
• If you get off topic or run out of ideas, keep writing anyway.
• If you feel bored or uncomfortable as you're writing, ask yourself what's bothering you and write about that.
• When the time is up, look over what you've written, and mark passages that contain ideas or phrases that might be worth keeping or elaborating on at a later time.

You can offer students a topic, calling the session a focused free-write. Students follow the same free-writing rules.

Loop Writing

• Reread your free-writing and underline the sentence or phrase that seems most important or most interesting.
• Put that sentence/ phrase at the top of a clean page.
• Write from that sentence/ phrase to dig deeper. Write to surprise yourself.
• Continue the looping process several times to push for insights or innovative thinking.

Writing Territories

We can assist our students in finding topics for their free-writing by helping them establish writing territories. Nancie Atwell introduced the idea in her book In the Middle. It is simply a long list, which is continually added to, of topics that a student has a personal interest in. I include the time I stood next to a bank robber and my mistake in naming my son in my writing territories.

I prime the pump for students by asking them to compile a class list of things we all know about: birthdays, holidays, the first day of school, weather, etc. The class list is available for all to see and from this list students develop lists of personal topics for writing about later.

Writing Reasons

Kelly Gallagher (2006) offers eight reasons for writing to keep students motivated. He expands on these reasons in his book Teaching Adolescent Writers.

1. Writing is hard, but "hard" is rewarding.
2. Writing helps you sort things out.
3. Writing helps to persuade others.
4. Writing helps to fight oppression.
5. Writing makes you a better reader.
6. Writing makes you smarter.
7. Writing helps you get into and through college.
8. Writing prepares you for the world of work. a

The simplest change we can make in our curriculum to respond to the demands of college ready writing is simply to write more. The above activities promote safety and develop fluency. What has worked in your classroom to get students to write more?

Anderson, Jeff. 2011. Ten Things Every Writer Needs to Know. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.

Atwell, Nanci. 1998. In the Middle: New Understandings About Writing, Reading, and Learning. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Gallagher, Kelly. (2006) Teaching Adolescent Writers. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.

Goldberg, Natalie. 2010. Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within. Boston: Shambhala.