Questions Students Ask Me: How am I NOT done writing?

In every classroom, there is always one student who finishes before everyone else, aptly named Mr. or Miss “I’m Done”.

Yet, they are not done, especially in a writing classroom.

These students are from three camps – the perfectionists, those lacking in spirit and those that don’t know what to fix.

When I say lacking in spirit, I mean that they are not motivated to look over their writing to make changes.

The perfectionist, also does not want to make changes because they are perfect.

Those who don’t know what to fix cannot make changes cause they have no idea what they would change.

These types of students cannot be changed over night.

Yet, the fix is the same for all three.

There needs to be an expectation stated in your room where students look over a criteria list and assess what their writing has and what it needs.

This needs to be modeled by teachers and rewarded.

Rewarding changes means that student work is shared often in the process of writing.

A student might share a revised beginning, a revised sentence, a reordering of ideas, revised dialogue or a revised ending.

All revision, edits, changes need to be celebrated in order to defeat the “one and done” approach.

Perhaps keep a record of individual changes in a document. This might provide the encouragement that they need.

Other ideas include a one column rubric, goal setting, breaking tasks down and comparing their current writing to past work.

As I mentioned in a previous post, it is also important to show students what you mean by adding details.

The reality is, in the writing classroom you are not done, you’ve only just begun.

Until Next Time,

Coach Clark