Toward Better Student Writing

If we are going to see more of that "advanced writing" I wrote of in the previous post, we need to design our writing assignments according to the best practices currently available. Gleaned from personal experience and a variety of other sources, here are what I consider a few of the most important considerations:

• Give students some of the responsibility for generating assignments and topics. If they are more personally invested, they are more likely to give their best effort.
• Assign writing tasks that have a real audience and purpose.
• Encourage experimentation. Don't ever grade down a student for taking a chance or trying something new. The only way for students to develop new techniques is by trying them out. High school writers often get stuck in the same narrow stylistic rut.
• Force-- don't merely encourage with some kind of checklist-- meaningful revision. Students often fall in love with a neatly printed page. By force, I mean assign; you might say something such as: "I want to see that paragraph completely reworked as cause and effect." Or maybe, "Rewrite that section from the perspective of a different character." Or, "Try that page in a much more light-hearted/sarcastic/formal/combative tone."
• Strongly consider creating a class blog on which students could post their work. This would go a long way toward encouraging that experimentation and revision that is so vital. It would also automatically create an audience, which could be students in other grades or classes at your school, or students from across the globe.
• Write along with your students. Writing teachers should also be writers. Showing them both your struggles and your successes can be a very powerful lesson.
• Provide models for each writing task you assign. The first step in learning is sometimes following the pattern of an expert.
• Find a way to get your students to read. Anything. The elephant in many writing classrooms is the knowledge that good writing requires good reading. One might even say that the two are flip sides of the same coin.