Let Students Do The Work
Posted by Marsha on November 2, 2011
Teachers, please-work smarter, not harder.
As a writing coach and trainer, I visit many classrooms and see a reoccurring event… students watching teachers doing all the work. I see teachers doing a better job thinking aloud and modeling, but they are not giving students adequate time to practice the skill. Instead, they assign another whole writing prompt and expect students to apply what they just witnessed to this new writing situation without practicing the skill in a smaller chunk. Teachers are doing all the writing and students are jumping to the product without enough hands on practice. The teachers are doing all the writing and thinking and the students are mimicking her thinking, but not thinking or writing for themselves.
A simple solution can be found in a variation to the teacher modeling/student watching version. Instead of jumping to new writing situation, use students’ previously written essays as personal “work sheets” for students to practice one target skill at a time. To do this, teachers must know what they want to see in their students’ writing.
For example, let’s say I want my students to know the following about an expository essay: (1) each paragraph needs a topic sentence that supports the main idea of the essay; (2) each topic sentence needs supporting details that support the main idea of the paragraph. Here are steps to take that allow teachers to model and students to practice:
- Model, with one of my own previously written essays, ONE paragraph that identifies a clear topic sentence, supporting details, and elaboration. My goal for sharing one expository paragraph with students is to show them how details support the main idea and how elaboration helps drive that support home. (I might even use a rubric to assess my paragraph.)
- Ask students to comment about the strengths of my topic sentence and how the details support it. To what extent does my elaboration help explain or support my topic sentence?
- Now, it is time for them to do the work. Instead of assigning a new writing situation, I have students look at their old essay (written to the same writing situation as mine) to evaluate their own focus sentence and support.
- After a few minutes, I ask the class if anyone has found a problem with their focus sentence or support in their paper, and would like to put it up on the document camera so the rest of the writers in our group can help. This is very important because my students are doing the thinking. They are evaluating in order to come up with solutions to help their peers.
- We take a couple volunteers to share their paragraph. This is helpful because students begin to make connections to their own piece. They hear feedback from the writing of their peers that also pertain to their piece. Also, based on their comments, discussions, and suggestions, I get a glimpse as to where they are as writers.
- I leave students to work on their own paragraph. ONE paragraph.
- The next day, I may ask for volunteers to share the paragarph before and after the revisions.
- We may repeat this with the other paragraph from the same essay, or talk about introductions and conclusions. We may look at another target such as word choice, transitions or conventions. The point is, I use the previously written essay to teach from before I assign a new writing situation.
Moral to the story: students need to be doing the writing, but that doesn’t mean starting a new piece. Use previously written pieces to teach from AND provide many opportunities to practice in smaller chunks before assigning a new writing situation. Otherwise, it is like a coach having his team show up to play a game after showing video of really good plays, but without running practice drills!
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