Writers write.
Subject and predicate.
Reality and hopeful wish.
What we fail to realize as writing teachers is that students need time to immerse themselves in writing.
Bad writing. Horrible writing. Mediocre writing. Good enough writing. All of it writing. Sometimes, good writing.
How do students become good writers? Writers write. That’s what they do. When writers write, good things happen.
We force our students to cram writing into 30 or 40 minutes. 15 minutes is taken up with a mini lesson. Several minutes accompany the transition, and a quick check in and one on one conference leaves the student with about 7 minutes to actually write during the 40 minute writing lesson. We provide a 30 minute intervention period for a struggling writer and repeat the same pattern.
We ask students to write a “sloppy copy,” then peer revise, and turn in a final copy. “Make sure the final copy is written neatly,” we add. Have you ever seen Hemingway’s journal?
There we are assigning boring essays, and other such drivel, trying to get kids excited about writing in thirty minute intervals.
If we were smart though, we would let those writers loose to write.
Bad writing. Horrible writing. Mediocre writing. Good enough writing. All of it writing. Sometimes, good writing.
After all, writers write.
Rich