Some things I have learned as a teacher of writing:

• Be a Writer Yourself. Write when your students write, even if it is just occasionally. When they see you as a writer, they see the value you put in writing and how you use writing strategies and habits. Your own writing can then provide a meaningful mentor text to your students where you model revising, etc.
• Spark Learning. After you decide on a purpose for writing that is relevant to your students, spark their interest in a novel way. Have the principal send a letter to students. Have a “company” send a voice mail requesting writing from the students. Plan to share the writing with families or another class. Offer making a video or another type of project at the end to synthesize the writing. Use a song, a wrap, a poem, a quote, a video clip. Be creative!
• Consider Audience. When students know their audience, they can imagine the audience next to them reading the writing. This motivates writing clearly and revising and editing to polish writing and make it readable and useful/enjoyable to read.
• Encourage Language Diversity. Experiment with language. Discuss the different types of language we use throughout the day: at home, with friends, with different communities, with different purposes. Celebrate when multilingual students write in their first language/s. Have students ask, “What texts are best for highlighting your voice?”
• Analyze Mentor Texts. Provide hard copies of a mentor text for students to mark up. Project one so that all of the class can see the text together. As a class, look for what moves the author does to make the writing effective. Circle, star, underline! Then have students do this in partners or individually to find more ideas from the text. It is best to do this early in a writing project to introduce the type of writing, and throughout. Important Note: While you are empowering students to understand the structure and moves an author makes, do not make that the only way the writing can be done. Encourage creativity and intention in writing moves.
• Engage in Interactive Writing. Write with your students and display the writing where everyone can see it as you write. Use and build on their ideas, paying attention to the most precise vocabulary. Show how you can brainstorm ideas before selecting the best one to write. Call on all your students over time to make space for their ideas and voices.
• Model, Model, Model. Did I Mention Modeling? Guide your students through the process of writing by modeling all the stages. Make sure they can see what you are doing by projecting it, and actually engage in the writing while they watch. Plan with intention by writing your plan ahead of time, with emphasis on the skill or strategy you wish to focus on. Then keep your modeling short and give them time to write.
• Time to Write. Provide ample opportunity to write during the day and across the week. Keep the structure of the writing time consistent so students trust the routine and focus on creativity in their writing. Coach them during this time (either 1:1 or in small/large groups); when you give real time feedback and time to act on feedback, you are maximizing the potential for growth.
• Collect Pieces of Writing Over Time. The thing I like best about writing is how it provides a concrete way to show your process, your final work, and your growth. It is extremely satisfying to see a first draft; all the revisions, edits and rewrites; and the final draft side by side. When comparing this to a draft written a year ago or three years ago, one can celebrate the body of work and growth as a writer.
• Develop Structured Partnerships. Assign strategic writing partnerships for a unit of study. Model what effective partners do (both as writers and as compassionate humans), practice, reteach, and layer on more sophisticated skills: How do you greet your partner? What type of feedback is most useful for a partner? How do you sit to see each other’s writing? How do you act on the feedback you find useful? Partnerships build a community of writers and offer every writer a peer to offer positive and constructive feedback.
• Provide Editorial Partners. I went through the editorial process with my editor for my Edutopia article. (I love saying, “Editor!” It makes publication seem so real.) The feedback she gave me not only improved my article, but it will impact all the future writing I do. For example, she noted that my phrase structure changed in one of my lists. When I revised for more consistency, the article read more smoothly. This is something I will take with me and continue to work on as a writer. Yesterday I established “Editorial Partners” with my second graders. These partners were different from their Writing Partnerships, so each writer had a fresh set of eyes on their paper. Because the partners were intentional, there was a new energy in the room and all the students were able to celebrate each other’s writing and give 2-3 tips on things to improve. Then they made the improvements before our final reflection.
• Try Writing Dialogue Journals (DJs). When writing in a DJ, a student writes to you and you respond. Your response models writing with special emphasis to the skills the writer is ready to work on. Try to make your response shorter than what the student writes. These are a huge relationship builder… and they provide an excellent way to process through challenging times. I cannot count the number of times we have had a rough day or experienced a disappointment in our classroom, and turning to DJs to work out feelings has provided just the right thing.

The ideas above are just a few of the most important ones that come to mind and I hope others find them useful. As always, I look forward to hearing from others. What else have you tried? Do you have ideas to add to those above?

When we did our final circle on Friday, I asked students to share how they are feeling about writing. One of them said, “I’m sad because I don’t get to write until Monday.” When I replied that, “You can write whenever and wherever you want!” They responded with, “But not with all of you!” I felt humbled by the words and the sense of writing community we have built. Writing matters.

“A word after a word after a word is power.”
-Margaret Atwood

Resources:
Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students, Zaretta Hammond