Techniques of Teaching Writing

If you are a language arts teacher, do you write? I decided to teach language arts because I love to write. This seems to make me an outlier, as the traditional teacher chooses the field because of a love of literature. I like literature too, but it was really my life as a writer that I wanted to share with students. Because of my own experiences, my techniques of teaching writing have been infused with the mindset and practicalities of what it’s like to actually write. Three of the broader techniques I use are ones that I see underutilized (or cut, because time!) in classrooms.

Why Brainstorming is Important

Honestly, I didn’t even want to use the word “brainstorming,” which evokes images of graphic organizers. That’s not to say these ideas don’t have some research basis, but true brainstorming is about idea generation, not worksheet completion. Organizers may aid in generation or just be a way to compel students to be accountable for production. 

Brainstorming is an important step for all writers. When writers get the opportunity to create an “idea flood,” they can write from a place of abundance. This flood is especially important for most students, who do not consider themselves writers, and therefore already see themselves as “lacking.” For them to operate from a place of having lots to write about is to cultivate voiced agency.

So, how do you create a flood for students who have “nothing to write about”?

Use texts as springboards for writing.

One reason students have “nothing to say” is that we expect them to write without background knowledge. One solution is to have students write from their own lives. Showing students the richness of their own lives as “texts” is a powerful meaning-maker, but there are times and conditions in which students are limited by personal writing or may not feel the teacher has earned the right to access even the most seemingly benign personal information about them. Sure, we long to build relationships of trust, but I totally get why a student may lose faith in the system that we represent, whether we like it or not. 

Furthermore, use of evidence is a primary skill across the disciplines. The ability to see outside one’s self and consider alternate perspectives is a vital democratic necessity currently on the endangered list. Oftentimes, when students write from texts, however, they haven’t had enough time to digest the texts in order to have something worth writing. Using my FREE literacy lesson plan helps students generate a lot of ideas as they communally consider a text.

This technique does not just apply to analytical writing, where students are writing about the text in question. In research units, students can use seed texts as springboards to research outside the text. In this practice, students read an article or essay together using the four moves every literacy lesson plan needs, and as they read, they generate inquiry questions that come up because of the reading. From there, they find additional texts to read, and thus, a path of inquiry is born.

Use writing groups.

James Britton once said, “Reading and writing float on a sea of talk.” In addition to talking about texts, as students get ready to write, I give them a ton of time to talk about what they are going to say. These writing groups meet to pitch and question each other’s ideas before they ever start writing, an idea gleaned from Liz Prather’s wonderful book, Project-Based Writing (for a deeper dive into this book, you can check out my review on Moving Writers). Liz is a working writer and teacher, so she likens this process to freelance writers pitching their editors. These groups help validate and clarify students’ ideas.

Between a flood of ideas and the engagement of actual humans with their writing plans, students are more energized to write than I’ve ever seen them get from filling out an organizer. In fact, after these steps, most students opt into their own organizer in a way that works for them because they want to “get it right” for their audience, their writing group. These groups can check in throughout the writing process formally or informally as they journey together doing what is independent work. This is why so many adult writers seek out writing groups. They need community for what can be inherently isolating work.

Gradual Release of Responsibility in Writing

Another way to address the isolation of writing is to use gradual release of responsibility in writing. Since writing is an essential component of every lesson, it can’t always be students writing independently. For one thing, that becomes assigning and not teaching. And also, it is really boring. For everyone. One way to approach this writing everyday is to cycle through the gradual release of responsibility as appropriate. 

I Do

I answer the prompt for the day, thinking aloud how to write it. This can be the whole writing or one part (e.g. the claim or citing evidence). To get the students involved, I may have them evaluate my writing using a checklist and then give me feedback, discuss with small groups what they would do next with the writing, or give them a copy to revise. If I want them to just understand the steps of what I’m doing, I have them write absent notes for anyone gone from class that day describing the steps (authenticity + check for understanding = winning).

WE Do

Students write and nominate claim sentences. We vote on one to use. Students write and nominate a sentence or two of evidence and analysis. We vote on which ones to include so that we can make a strong, thorough argument. This can be done low-tech with scraps of paper or high-tech, using a Google form where students submit their answers (you can hide the tab with people’s names in the results) and vote by number (since each row of the results sheet will have its own number). Here are two Google forms: one for claims and one for evidence/reasoning that you can copy and use with your students.

THEY Do

In small groups, students break up parts of the prompt to write. One person does the claim and wrap-up, the rest write evidence and analysis sentences. I’ve also done this as a relay race, where the group that finishes first gets a prize. Before the race officially begins, make sure the students have confirmed what each person is going to say. This is basically race strategy. This helps because the focus is on winning together, so making a plan ahead of time helps all students be included.

YOU Do

Students write independently. Again, this could be an answer to the whole prompt or a certain part of it (more on this below). When students are writing, I am circling and coaching. I want students to be able to let the writing flow without self-editing or over-thinking. Anyone whose cursor is not moving gets a quick conference from me.

I’ll start by asking how it’s going (an old Carl Anderson trick). Usually, they say they are stuck with something. I coach them through the next thing they need to do, to get them unstuck. Often, I am referring them back to the discussion they just had if it’s writing about a text (I always make sure the information they need comes out in discussion) or to whatever roadmap they have made for themselves in the writing. If they didn’t make one, I will ask them what the reader needs to know first, second, etc. I jot down notes as they talk and then leave them with what they said. I want them to feel productive/knowledgeable, and to have some simple coaching they can use on themselves when I am occupied.

Deliberate Practice for Writers

In addition to considering the responsibility of a student in classroom writing, I also consider what they are deliberately practicing. Deliberate practice is all about setting a specific goal and getting feedback to continuously improve. Sometimes, the students practice writing claims. Other times, writing strong evidence (and correctly integrating it with quotation marks) based on a claim I give them. They can write just endings too, where I write the paragraph and leave the ending open. Sometimes we focus on making sure they have thorough evidence by selecting evidence from the whole text to see what would be “enough.” 

In addition to this deliberate practice for on-demand analytical writing that we do almost every day, we need to practice a longer writing cycle too, where the students are balancing writerly decisions with project management skills. In these lessons, we don’t simply have open work time. I don’t get anything done with that lack of structure, and neither do they. In these cases, each day, we have a deliberate practice focus. Sometimes, it is a function of the writing phase–idea generation, drafting, revising, editing. Other times, especially as the year progresses, students set their own deliberate practices for the class period.

What Writing Everyday Does

If you live in a cold-weather climate, you may know about leaving the faucets trickling in your house to prevent the pipes from freezing when it gets polar-vortex cold. Writing works in much the same way. If students have even a trickle of writing (or writerly thinking) each day, it makes it easier to flow when they need to produce at a higher volume. This, along with the supreme benefits for reading, is writing is one of the four moves every literacy lesson plan needs. These writings, whether they be collaborative or independent, targeted toward one skill or holistic development, tell me what writing instruction the students will need the next day. It all boils down to three questions.

1. Are they ready for more responsibility?
2. Do they need to focus on a particular skill or practice integrating the parts?
3. What will tomorrow’s text naturally lend itself to accomplishing?

The answers to these questions form how I will teach the next day so that I am responsive as I consistently string together the essential components of reading and writing instruction across the school year.

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