©Liyin Yeo
In my final year
of high school I discovered my love for writing. I think at first it was
because it was something I understood; I couldn’t explain it, but there was
this part of me that just felt like I got it. The more I wrote, the more proud
I became of my work and the more I wanted to write. I finally realized that the
clarity and effectiveness of my writing was entirely correlated with my
confidence in my abilities.
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I associate a
lot of this confidence with my English and creative writing teachers very
important mantra; at least once during every class he would say to us ‘write
everyday’ and so we would. For five or ten minutes at the beginning of each
class we would write in response to something;
be it a prompt he provided us or something we’d experienced and wanted to vent
about. We would write and we would stop and the lesson would begin.
Occasionally, one or two people would share but it wasn’t about what we were
writing it was about how we were writing it.
How
Can We Encourage Students to Write? #studentengagement
A mother who
home schools her two boys wrote a blog about
her successful experiencing implementing a writing jar as an activity for
language arts. She filled the jar with prompts that were related to topics of
interest for her two boys and would begin writing activities by having them
each grab 2 or 3 prompts and choosing the one they wanted to use. She would
then focus the activity to the grade level of each child. For her youngest she
might have him write a few sentences whereas her oldest would be expected to
create thesis sentences and full paragraphs in response to his prompt.
Are
Writing Jars Even Applicable? #corecurriculum
The
possibilities of a writing jar are endless and allow teachers to encourage
particular forms of writing and important aspects of the curriculum while still
using topics that are relatable and interesting to the students. By have
students brainstorm ideas and gather information, create a piece of writing,
proof read and edit their work and then finally reflect on their strengths and
weaknesses teachers would are able to apply the work related to writing jars to
all four of the overall expectations for writing in the Ontario Curriculum.
Save
the Trees, Use Technology! #makewritingfunagain
As a teacher I
will take on my teacher’s mantra and the ideas presented by this woman and her
writing jar by encouraging my students to respond to anything and everything by
writing about it. The jar uses word prompts but I believe that in order to make
students enjoy writing we need to inspire them by providing a variety of places
to start. Specifically, we need to appeal to their interests and delve into
their worlds so writing will be less of a chore!
As technology is
a huge part of their world (and ours!) I believe it is important to incorporate
it as much as possible into all aspects of teaching, especially because we know
it is something most students will understand and be engaged with. Technology
provides us with another great way to encourage writing… by using photos as
writing prompts! It could be a photo the students take themselves, one provided
by the teacher, or even a photo they found online. Check out Robyn’s World for some great ideas on
how to get started using photos as writing prompts!
What
Do We Want? Writers! When Do We Want Em’? NOW!
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| ©TAA |
When I was a student I
learned that jotting down some nonsensical sentences for as few as five minutes
built my confidence as a writer and made me love to communicate through words.
And not that I or anyone else will ever be perfect (because wouldn’t that be a
boring world!) but through this mantra I truly learned the meaning of practice makes perfect and
that is exactly what I will try to reinforce when I’m teaching writing.
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