Routman focus on writing should be shared with everyone who is involved with children and writing. I totally agree with her. We have made students literally hate writing because of the demands and pressure we have placed on them when writing. The joy of writing has been removed from the writing process when we do not allow students the opportunity to write on a topic of their choice. Instead we give them boring subject matter that has no connection or meaning to them. Students and teachersare stressed to the max with the demand of writing to raise test scores verses writng for meaning. Too much focus is often placed on mechanics and not enough on the contents and idea.
In Writing Essentials:Raising Expectations and Results While Simplifying Teaching celebrations of student accomplishments at any stage of writing tend to motivate students to want to write. Students who only wrote maybe one line stated that they didn’t have any thing to write about . They too were celebrated as well as those who wrote more than a line. During the next writing task the same students attempted to write even farther. Celebrating students as well as giving them a choice in writing helped them to be more motivated and willing to write even more the next time.
Reading strategies are parallel to writing. Routman uses think aloud as one strategy so students could follow her thinking as she wrote. The writing was then modeled so students could see the process in work. When modeling what writing looks like, ideas are the focus more than mechanics. Modeling the writing lesson in front of the students gave them the opportunity to see that writing was a struggle even for those who couldalready write well. This made the students appreciate their writing even more.
When writing from experiences students were better able to express their own ideas. Real life situation are often the best prompts for meaningful writing. Giving students a meaning for writing was more purposeful than writing just to be writing.
Good readers are often good writers because they tend to translates their ideas into writing. Routman has explored so many avenues in writing which has given students ownership in the process. I am so glad that she was inspired to write this book. Reading her book has inspired me to want to become a better writer.
This does sound like an intriguing text! I especially agree with this statement, “Reading strategies are parallel to writing.” We are often taught to model reading strategies with our students (decoding unknown words, building vocabulary, questioning what we are reading, etc.), but modeling how we write – our own, personal writing process – makes perfect sense, especially since reading and writing go hand-in-hand. Thanks for the post!