Teaching of Writing to Students

¶ … teaching of writing to students and analyzes a web site set up by a teacher that details her timeline method of teaching students to become more effective and successful writers.

Teaching Students to Write More Effectively

Teaching students to write is one of the most important duties that a teacher is charged with. Written communication skills are a vital part of education, employment and other aspects of life. It is rated so highly in the field of education that many states require that public school students go through a writing assessment at various grade levels for the purpose of assessing the writing lessons and curriculum (Barenbaum, 1988).

Teachers are constantly on the lookout for lesson plans or ideas that will help teach writing skills to their students.

The teaching role under a process model is characterized as active, directive, facilitative, and supportive. The active teacher both understands the nature of the writing process and is equipped with techniques to provide direction and support for the learner throughout the stages of writing. Thus, the teacher facilitates writing by providing instruction to guide student planning or revision, to increase schema building, or to encourage the student to monitor his or her own writing. The teacher knows which writing skills the child has acquired and which ones need further development (Barenbaum, 1988)."

One teacher developed a writing teaching strategy that was so effective with her students she developed a website on which she explains its use. It is called a "Writing Timeline." always divide long writing assignments into several steps. I give each student a copy of the timeline. I also keep the students informed of due dates for each step, but remind them that these due dates may change if it becomes necessary. I change the due dates if I find that most of the students need more time even though they have been working."

This first step is an essential part of effective teaching in any subject. Chunking workloads often helps the student feel less overwhelmed by everything that must be done within the allotted time frame (TIMELINE (http://www.kimskorner4teachertalk.com/writing/writingprocess/timeline).

Using this writing time line can be an essential element to the student feeling encouraged and eager to proceed with the project, as opposed to feeling overwhelmed and incapable of performing the task at hand.

The timeline also provides a specific number of daily points for completion that day or week's tasks toward the writing project. This helps students stay motivated to use the timeline and follow its guidelines. Many students will procrastinate if they have a large assignment and then find themselves in a panic when the deadline draws near, however, there is little immediate incentive for staying on task and completing the timeline steps. With this system the daily possibility of points help motivate the students.

The design teacher's decision to make the daily points an all or nothing is probably not something I would practice. I believe it would be discouraging to some students who would simply choose to give up.

I would use a graduated point system so that students could earn different point levels by doing more work and there would be a reward for different point levels as well.

For example 10 points might get extra computer time, while 15 might get an ice cream pass and 50 points might get a homework exemption pass.

The final writing assignment is graded as a 100 point test. If I am grading it for IDEAS and CONTENT, then 50 points are based on the rubric score the student earns (from 1 to 5), times 10. The other 50 points are based on the correct format and required length. (if I don't require a certain length, many students will write a paragraph or less.) Based on this grading system, a student who follows the correct format and length requirements will earn at least a 60%. I don't grade the final draft in class, as I need more time to carefully read it and give it a rubric score (TIMELINE (http://www.kimskorner4teachertalk.com/writing/writingprocess/timeline.)"

This is a valuable aspect of the writing timeline that the teacher has developed. It provides the student with the ability to earn points on having excellent ideas and content even if the grammar and spelling is not up to par.

For many students the fear of writing begins when they turn in something they worked hard to produce and thought they had a wonderful writing idea, only to have it returned with red marks all over it for grammar errors.

Grammar and punctuation are very important elements to the lesson of writing, however, one must also consider the ideas and content that were offered as well.

Dividing the grading system into two areas, one for ideas and content and the other for grammar, spelling and punctuation is a good idea if one wishes to encourage students to continue writing.

A student with really great ideas and storylines can work to improve his or her grammar and punctuation techniques.

A student that is a stellar speller and understands punctuation completely can work on his or her ideas and improve their writing with new skills.

Writing is a process both linear and recursive. It is linear because effective writers construct documents in well-defined and ordered stages. It is also recursive, however, because at any point an author may need to return to a previous stage."

This website offers an important piece of advice. Writers and students learning to write must understand that it is acceptable and normal to have to return to previous steps or elements of their writing project, and move forward again (the Writing Timeline (http://www.mhhe.com/mayfieldpub/tsw/wt.htm).