CREATING A CLIMATE FOR WRITING

Hi everybody! 

Its our final journey on this exciting and adventurous train ride we took exploring the many wonders of teaching writing. I hope by now, like myself, you are more inspired and motivated to become a better writing teacher and promote more successful writers in your classroom. 

On this journey, we take a look at some very important tips/ideas that will help us to set the right climate for our classroom writing activities. Our blog assignment this week for LIT102 is guided by an article we read which speaks to just that. It is entitled: Creating A Climate for Writing.

In case you are wondering what this really means, I would share with you a brief summary of its content. I will also share a link below to which you can access this article and peruse it at your convenience. It's truly a very informative article. 

From my understanding of the article, creating a climate for writing, simply means creating an environment or atmosphere that caters for the students different writing abilities, writing styles, writing needs, writing choices, every aspect that contributes to them becoming young successful writers. A climate that in every sense defines a differentiated learning classroom. A classroom where, according to the article, "all aspects of the physical and psychological environment have been established with the students' individual needs in mind."

In creating such a classroom, the article encourages us with these few but highly important tips.

👉Create a motivating environment in which we should 

• instill self - efficacy - replacing students self doubt with that "I can" self confident feeling; 
• develop self -regulated learners - whereby we as teachers model, personalize learning experiences and exhibit high expectations for our students and where they learn to use their meta-cognitive skills to guide their writing.
• develop (in our students) internal motivation - where they are not forced to write but through given choices and the responsibility to do so, their interests and curiosity builds.

👉 Create a safe and positive environment where students writing is respected, motivated, challenged and acknowledged for every small effort made, rather than bashed by the "red mark phobia" that only points out their errors. In this environment, feedback is timely, adequate and always positive to encourage student's interest. In this environment, expectations  are positive, clear and visual. .

👉 Creating an Exciting Writing Environment. I really like this tip. It speaks to using a lot of creative materials to stimulate students interest in writing activities, giving them something to look forward to doing. Choices of different sizes, shapes, colours and styles of writing paper and tools such as markers, glitter dust, crayons etc., will be enticing to them than the ordinary full-paged ruled notebooks that they are accustomed to.

Here's an example of some types of paper mentioned. The article spoke to using different shapes of writing paper to match the topic of which the students are writing. So if they are writing about their favourite fruit, having them write on the apple shaped paper would excite them more.

                  

I remember in a previous class, the lecturer highly recommended composition notebooks that allowed for a space for students to draw first at the top, then write about their drawings at the bottom. This would be very helpful for our young writers along with colourful writing tools.

 👉 Create the right spots for them to write. Allow for them to have choices of comfortable, special or unique working areas such as rugs, sofas, writing centers, special writing corners etc., all equipped with creative tools they can use. However, ensure they are true to the tasks they are given and not wasting time, by posting rules for the use and management of such.

👉Cater for students feelings and emotions towards the writing assignments and allow them choices to set their own goals as to what, how much and for how long they can write, so that they can develop a deeper sense of personal responsibility, pride and ownership.

👉 Assess the writing climate. This is for us teachers to conduct regular checks to see if we are creating the correct writing climate for our students. Below is a partial list of some of the things we should assess.

Place an X on the appropriate place on the line that describes the writing climate. 
                                                                                    Most of        Rarely                                                                                                                                    the Time        Ever 
1. I provide a psychologically safe environment 
so students feel free to express ideas.                              ___________________

2. I think of my classroom from the student’s 
point of view.                                                                    ___________________

3. I model and share my writing experiences.                   ___________________

4. I respect writing time and avoid interruptions.              ___________________

5. I use a variety of writing tools and materials.                 ___________________

6. I emphasize the value of daily improvements               ___________________

more than grades. 

I think these are excellent ideas for any writing classroom. While I read them, I visualized every idea at work in my classroom and I found myself somewhat relishing the opportunity to put them into practice. And while there may be challenges in implementing some of them, I really hope to make these visualizations a reality. I appreciate that it gave an assessment checklist for us teachers, so we can monitor our own actions to ensure we are on track with carrying out what is being recommended. I would definitely recommend these ideas to my colleagues outside this blog.

This article was very interesting, and it echoed some of the very things I read in the very first article which began this blog post. Tim Gillespie's : Becoming Your Own Expert. They both speak to nurturing our students' unique writing abilities. These two articles, in addition to all that was read, researched and discussed on the other aspects and genres of writing posted in this blog, will serve as a great resources for me to use to better my skills at teaching writing. And believe me, I am really excited to try them out. I sure hope that you do so too.

Here's a link to checking out this very wonderful article.

Creating a Climate for Writing

You can check out the other article mentioned in other posts on this blog.

Also do not forget to check out the book below for help with teaching the different aspects and genres of writing, which was a great source of most of the information discussed in our class sessions and on this blog.

And especially do not forget to check out this entire blog for more posts on this article and other topics for teaching writing.

Thanks for sharing in this first time, enjoyable blogging experience with me. I sure hope you enjoyed the journey we took together, and I especially hope that the information in these posts even as much as helped to arouse your thoughts on becoming a better writing teacher.

  

SO LONG!