It’s been striking me recently how self-confidence and independence as a writer hinges on knowing your voice matters. When young writers know their words make a difference, then they are more confident, are willing to take risks, and are motivated to write. I also believe this is a difference in classrooms where students are encouraged to be truly independent as opposed to just being given lots of choices.
Something that Troy Rushmore discussed in a session with Patrick Allen, Debbie Miller, and Kristin Venable at NCTE was the idea of true independence versus controlled independence. Last year NCTE was near Disney World, so they compared the way independence is controlled at Disney World as you wind your way between the ropes to get to the ride to the way some classrooms offer choices in order to control independence.
This image has stuck with me as I think about nudging young writers to independence. Independence is not just about making choices. It is also knowing your voice and ideas and words matter. It is about believing you can impact others. I’ve been searching for more opportunities for students to see the importance of their words in their classrooms, communities, and world. How do you help your students know their words impact others?
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I do something similar to “the other ruth”….taking all the brilliant thinking straight from the kids’ mouths and making it public by quoting them on anchor charts. A few weeks ago we were noticing what we loved about non-fiction author Martin Jenkins (Chameleons are Cool) and I quoted thoughts on a chart. I’m amazed at how often the kids refer to this during workshop.
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I had forgotten until now, but in my classroom, I used to have a chart titled “wise words from room __”. The words were all from students. One I’ll always remember was from a 7 year old English Language Learner. He said, “if you read the words over and over, you can hear the song in a poem.”
As kids said things like this, their words were posted, giving a clear message that we truly all do learn from one another and that their ideas and words and voices mattered just as much as mine.
Although this isn’t about kids voices in their writing, I think that if they learn their voices, written or spoken, are heard and count, it carries over into their reading and writing and thinking lives.
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I believe that bringing in a real world audience is so important. Many times, I will ask students who they are writing to or why they chose to write this at the beginning stages of a genre. Childre will write and will write more if there is a true audience.
Some teachers have created classroom blogs for publishing and then taught their students how to comment. Excitement really sparked in those classrooms. It took the ordinary workshop to a higher level.
I share with kids how comments on my blog excite me. In my personal writing, my intended audience is what motivates me. They hold me accountable.
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We blog! People from other places comment and ask questions…we know we have a purpose for writing. 🙂
We also shared what we’ve learned by writing magazine articles that we published and shared with our school and local community.
We held a memoir reading at the local Starbucks as a way to share our writing with a larger audience. It was such a huge success! 🙂
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