Writing is not easy.

#nope

Writing is not something that most people enjoy doing.

#theydonot

Becoming a good writer requires time, practice, and feedback.

As a district with an extremely diverse population, we’ve noticed that a problem is our ability to write. Not only is this seen in standardized testing, but also in our daily, weekly, and other writing pieces. So, we are doing what any good district does, diving right into it and seeing what we need to do to help our students become better writers.

#sweet

You’d think so, but writing is hard. And right now, kids don’t want hard. They want easy. They want answers, not “What do you think”. They want it done for them, not “could there be other word choices there”. They don’t want to write.

Today, we took a writing sample on a non-fiction piece of reading we’ve been working with for the last couple of days. We knew it wouldn’t be the best, which is fine because we thought we had until Friday. We went through the graphic organizer, talking about topic sentences, supporting details, how we get text evidence into the piece, and how to wrap up the writing. We did all this together. Then I said, “Ok, with those pieces in front of you, now it’s your turn. Create a summary with a topic sentence, supporting details, and a conclusion. The one thing I can tell you, I cannot help you.”

#uhoh

There was wailing and gnashing of teeth. There was crying. There were tantrums. Ok, not really, but there were not many happy students. For them to put their thoughts on paper or a computer screen is apparently hard work, even with an organizer that has reference to a topic sentence, supporting details, a conclusion, transition words, and sentence stems. We have our work cut out for us.

However, we also have some amazing reading/writing teachers who are coaching us through these teethnashing sessions (now I’m referring to us as teachers, not the kids). They help us to see that, yes, we are all starting in different spots in our own understanding of how writing works and the teaching of said understanding to students.

I try to get my students to write whenever I can. We blog at least once a week (https://app.seesaw.me/blog/mrjohnstonclass/) and we write about various things in class. With the type of diversity we have in class, I do this for two reasons. One, the most obvious, practice. Practice with words, sentences, spelling, formatting, and just getting words out. The second reason, give them a voice. I’ve got some students who’ve had experiences I cannot fathom. The poverty they’ve escaped coming to our country is just mindblowing. They need a place where they can celebrate who they are, where they’ve come from, and what they’ve become. It’s pretty cool to learn a little more about them each and every day, both through our daily stuff, but also through their writing.

Writing is hard.

But we’ll get there.