Thank you for sharing this, Adrian. Love John's stuff, and love the approach that you're taking with it. I'm a community college English professor, and as it happens I volunteered to lead an after-school creative writing club at my daughter's elementary school last year. I kind of expected that I would have to come up with fun activities to get students into writing, but as it turned out, no, they pretty much just wanted to show up and write their stories. (And read, and hang out, but you know, that was fine.)
This was a small and self-selected group, but it more or less matched what I've seen with my college students: people actually want to write if you give them the opportunity to write about something that's meaningful to them.
(And it's definitely fine with me if you don't teach your students five-paragraph essays - just means that people like me don't have to un-teach it.)
I remember learning the five paragraph essay (and before that, the one paragraph where every sentence is supposed to play a specific part). I think those structures held me back for a long time, not understanding how "actual" writing was supposed to work. I chatted with my friends and wrote blog posts online and that was more like the writing I do today, but I didn't realize it was writing. Thanks for teaching your students a better approach.
I appreciate your comment. Elementary-aged students are so accustomed to completing templates for writing assignments, that pushing them to write in a more authentic way is challenging. Often, they want to know what to write instead of me requiring them to actually think about what they are writing.
Ah, interesting. That makes sense, since most school assignments have pretty clear directions. Hard to know how to inspire students to be creative or authentic in an assignment. Thanks for your work.
Thank you for sharing this, Adrian. Love John's stuff, and love the approach that you're taking with it. I'm a community college English professor, and as it happens I volunteered to lead an after-school creative writing club at my daughter's elementary school last year. I kind of expected that I would have to come up with fun activities to get students into writing, but as it turned out, no, they pretty much just wanted to show up and write their stories. (And read, and hang out, but you know, that was fine.)
This was a small and self-selected group, but it more or less matched what I've seen with my college students: people actually want to write if you give them the opportunity to write about something that's meaningful to them.
(And it's definitely fine with me if you don't teach your students five-paragraph essays - just means that people like me don't have to un-teach it.)
jwr, I appreciate your story! For years, I ran an after-school boys writing club to help encourage boys to write more. https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/vulnerability-in-the-classroom-19a7158d12bf#:~:text=I%20launched%20The,time%20and%20effort.
Your experience matches mine: Boys just want permission to write what they want, not what the teacher wants.
Thanks for supporting me trying to teach writing differently!
I remember learning the five paragraph essay (and before that, the one paragraph where every sentence is supposed to play a specific part). I think those structures held me back for a long time, not understanding how "actual" writing was supposed to work. I chatted with my friends and wrote blog posts online and that was more like the writing I do today, but I didn't realize it was writing. Thanks for teaching your students a better approach.
I appreciate your comment. Elementary-aged students are so accustomed to completing templates for writing assignments, that pushing them to write in a more authentic way is challenging. Often, they want to know what to write instead of me requiring them to actually think about what they are writing.
Ah, interesting. That makes sense, since most school assignments have pretty clear directions. Hard to know how to inspire students to be creative or authentic in an assignment. Thanks for your work.