What Writing Should Be & Promoting a Positive Classroom Environment

 

I wanted to write a little bit about a project I’ve been working on and some things I’ve learned thus far from the project. As a member of the Honors college at my school, I am required to complete a capstone project or thesis. I chose to do a project in the classroom concerning teaching techniques and their effect on students’ attitude and writing. This spring semester, I worked with two class periods in a sixth grade classroom. I did writing activities with the students every time I went in. At the beginning of my time there, I asked students to rate how they felt about writing using a scale I developed. Most students were either indifferent towards writing or liked it okay while a few really hated or loved it. By the end of my time there, almost every student said they felt like they had become a better writer and they liked writing more. Of course, this is exactly what I was hoping for! While I am still reflecting on my approach, what worked well, and what I could have done better, there are several things I have determined as key factors in helping students become better writers and in creating a classroom environment that fosters positive teacher-student relationships and academic growth. For this post, I have written about these factors and split them into two groups: what writing in the classroom should be and ways to promote a positive classroom environment.

 

What writing should be:

Writing should be fun – One of the main reasons I see students disliking writing is because it simply isn’t fun. It’s something they do for an assignment, a grade, etc. and never for themselves. I tried to create activities that were fun for the students, like making comics or looking at a picture of a marketplace and then writing about the scene from the perspective of anyone or anything in the picture. Almost all the students seemed to enjoy participating in these activities, and in their final reflections one thing I noticed was that most of them said the writing they did was fun.

Writing should welcome mistakes – When we think of mistakes in writing, we think of those mistakes as bad. However, we have to make mistakes in order to learn and grow. Writing should not be intimidating. If students only think they are being evaluated for their grammar and spelling, they just won’t write. That’s why I had students free write for several minutes at a time and encouraged them to actually ignore their grammar for the time being. For example, I had students respond to a prompt and challenged them to write as many words as they could (middle schoolers love a good competition). That was probably the most they had written in a short time period that year. Before students can write well, they need to just write. Eventually, they get better, but first they need to ignore those voices telling them they shouldn’t put anything on paper unless it’s perfect.

Writing should be honest & unique – If students are only writing what they think you want to hear, then we are creating regurgitators of information and not creative thinkers who have a unique voice. Students’ voice should come through in their writing, whether it be humorous, serious, descriptive, or anything else. My favorite student writing to read were pieces I read and thought to myself, even if there wasn’t a name at the top of this I would know who had written it.

Writing should be a process – So often I think we assume that students should just be able to write. However, as teachers’ frustration with students’ writing often demonstrates, this simply isn’t the case. As I mentioned before, students’ writing often does and, in some ways, should start out as bad. Process is key to writing. Students need to learn the skills of planning, writing, and revising. After time, it will come more naturally, but writing is a process even for skilled writers (I outlined this post, wrote it, and then proofread it and made edits). If we start treating writing as more of a process and less of a product, students are more motivated to actively engage with the process, which ultimately leads to a better product.

 

Promoting a positive classroom environment:

Establishing a safe space to share – From the beginning, students need to know that their voice matters in the classroom. I encouraged students to share their writing and when they did I always found something positive to say and thanked them for sharing. Students’ best work materializes when they have something to say, and this only happens if they feel comfortable enough to say it. I had one student who could be difficult at times, but I never let my frustration show and treated her the same as the other students. For her narrative essay, she wrote about her parents’ divorce. Hearing her story helped me to understand her and I hope that the tone I set in the  classroom is what made her feel she could write about such a personal matter.

Promote collaboration and allow independence – Students shared their essay with peers for feedback which was something they hadn’t done with their previous essays assigned by their teacher. Engaging in this activity helped them to become more confident in their own writing and to be reflective thinkers as they considered what makes writing “good.” While the groups worked, I checked in with each group, but they were largely independent. By putting power in the students’ hands, they were incentivized to help one another and to work on improving their papers.

Don’t give up on students – There was one student who said “I can’t do it” with almost every activity. I was patient. I helped him. I encouraged him. He almost never wrote more than a few words for the activities, but my attitude towards him never changed. For his narrative essay (which wasn’t going to be graded and he knew this), he filled an entire page in fifteen minutes.

Find ways to challenge students – Another student was already an excellent writer, and he knew it. In fact, he was so confident in his rough draft that he was adamant it was his final copy. I tried what felt like a hundred different things, but I couldn’t get him to revise it. So, I kept him busy and “forced” him to reflect on his writing by having him do things like underlining what he thought were his two best sentences and writing about why he thought those sentences were the best. He was happy to do this because it didn’t seem like revision to him and while it was not revision in its truest sense, it was reflection. Instead of accepting his rough draft and letting him off the hook, I tried to find a way to challenge him because, while he is already a great writer, I wanted him to learn that there is always room for improvement and that effort, not ability, is what leads to success.

Be flexible – If students wanted to try something that was reasonable, I let them. If you want students to be invested, have some flexibility and let them try new things. The results are usually pretty great.

 

So, that is just a few things I learned. If you’ve made it this far, thanks so much for reading!  As I continue to reflect on my time at the school and to look back through students’ writing, I’m sure I will refine my discoveries and have new epiphanies. In the meantime, these are some of the things I’m trying to keep in mind. On a final note, I would encourage educators to remember that you are probably doing a better job than you think you are. During my last week at the school, a student came up to me and said, “So, you are trying to become a teacher, right?” I told him yes and he responded with, “You’re going to be a great teacher.” It’s moments like these that make it all worth it. Keep up the good work!