With the new school year beginning, I've listed what I’d like to see students accomplishing in the writing classroom.
I’d like students…
- To participate in a writing workshop with students and teachers writing and learning together.
- To feel good about being in the writing classroom because it gives them an opportunity to explore and shape their own thinking.
- To understand that improvement will come if they regularly put pen to paper or fingers to the keyboard.
- To interact with, and feel comfortable around, one another in the classroom.
- To feel that their presence matters, that they have something worthwhile to add to the class.
- To appreciate what it takes to produce quality writing.
- To research and write about topics that truly interest them.
- To know what is of foremost importance in writing—the development of ideas.
- To understand the value of pushing their thinking to the brink of confusion, if need be, to form their best thoughts.
- To know that writing can help them make sense of the fears and uncertainties associated with adolescence.
- To discuss writing using terms such as sensory details, clarity, focus, and so on.
- To acquire a writer’s ear for good writing and a writer’s eye for potential writing ideas.
- To produce one extended piece of writing that requires authentic research.
- To feel excited about the creative opportunities that writing offers them.
- To never be without a good book.
- To discover a new favorite writer, and to know why they find his or her books so appealing.
- To appreciate the many online writing opportunities that they have.
- To publish some of their writing—in print or online.
- To compile a portfolio that truly showcases their abilities as a writer.
- To realize, by the end of the year, that writing is not a school subject to master, but an activity that can truly enrich their lives.