Mindset plays a pivotal role in learning. Students who approach writing with confidence and enthusiasm are much more likely to persist through challenges than students who feel fearful and discouraged by it. Unfortunately, the latter category includes many students in our classrooms.
This year, let's nurture a positive mindset toward writing. But what classroom practices will help, and how can we measure progress?
Empowering Writers
To nurture a positive writing mindset in our students, we can incorporate some best practices into our classrooms.
- Invite students to write about topics of personal interest.
- Build choice into writing assignments.
- Immerse students in examples of good writing.
- Model effective reading and writing strategies.
- Balance freedom and structure (by teaching the writing process).
- Use minilessons to teach skills that writers can immediately apply.
- Focus your feedback on solutions, not problems.
- Be flexible about grammar and correctness.
- Make time for reflection.
- Point students to effective writing resources.
(Learn more about these best practices.)
Surveying Growth
To measure our students’ evolving mindsets, we can use entrance and exit surveys, like the ones that follow.