Writing Behaviors & the Process

With the action research project I’m about to embark on, I’m trying to get a better hold on the writing behaviors my students, who do not write regularly, possess. I reached for M. Colleen Cruz’s New Book from the Workshop Help Desk Series entitled A Quick Guide to Reaching Struggling Writers. This book is chock-full of suggestions to treat and diagnose nearly every reluctant writer I know! That being said, in an effort to figure out what makes some of the writers in my classroom tick, I’m going to interview the focal students I selected prior to Winter Recess. I looked over the questions Cruz poses on pgs. 6, 19-20, 44 – 47 and 71 to help me formulate my own interview questions, some of which closely parallel hers. I’m hoping these interviews will give me a better sense of my focal children’s writing behaviors and processes. These are the questions I’m planning to ask each child:

• Why do you write?
  
• What feels easy about writing?
  
• What feels challenging about writing?
  
• What’s your favorite piece of writing you’ve done so far this year?
  
  • Why?
    
• Where are you most productive as a writer? (Home or school? Desk or furniture?)
  
• What time of day do you write?
  
• How do you come up with an idea to write about?
  
• What do you do when you get stuck as a writer?
  
• What do you write about most often?
  
  • Why?
    
• How do you feel when you get to the end of a block of writing time?
  
• Do you bring your notebook anywhere other than home at night and back to school on weekdays?
  
• Where do you think other writers come up with ideas for their own writing?
  
• How do you know what to put in your plan box at the end of a minilesson?
  
• Do you usually complete everything in your plan box by the end of an independent writing session?
  
  • If not, when do you complete the rest of your plan?
    
• How do you know when a piece of writing is finished and ready to be published?