Are your H.S. students talking about their writing like these students?
The moment I knew in 1996 my classroom research worked: I shared with my junior English students a few excerpts from their portfolio reflective essays about their growth and change as writers.
"All my thoughts are like scrambled eggs--everything is mixed up... Now I write with more feeling and less speed."
"When I am writing, I don't just sit there and wait, but start writing anything that comes to mind and plot it in the paper."
"You can't just pick up a pen and paper and start writing, you must be willing to write."
"I have failed at writing."
"The benefits of writing are overwhelming (money, pleasure, pick-up lines?)."
"The one thing I learned this year is that the better you feel about your writing and about yourself the better your writing will turn out."
"Writing has helped me understand a lot."
"I try to write my stories by what the readers want to hear."
"When I write I like people complimenting me on my work."
"Probably the one thing that opened me up to writing was reading someone else's."
"Amazingly, I've probably done more writing in this year than both my previous English years combined! And that's a good thing, because from here on out, I am going to do a lot more writing."
"When I read it [my stories and poems book from third grade] many memories flash back."
"Before I didn't want to take a chance and try new forms of writing. Now I know that I should have taken that chance a long time ago but it's never too late to start."
"Before I thought writing was writing. But now I know writing is an expression of thought or real life put on paper."
"My life as a writer is a parabolic curve. I remember spending a full week or more on learning one letter of the English alphabet. Now they want an entire 15 page portfolio in half that time."
“...my experience in this class has given me a major wake up call.... This class has given me the opportunity to show myself ... what I need to work on...."
"Writing becomes a place to take yourself."
"Writing isn't always a perfect thing or a fun thing.”
“Sometimes .. you just want to finish."
"I know that you have to want to write something or at least be intent on writing it in order to write it well. It takes time....'
Here is the lesson and reproducibles:
Prewriting secrets that turn students into Real Writers who can explain their process
Note: When I discovered this seminal article while doing post-graduate work, it was one of those aha! moments when time stands still. Donald M. Murray was a writing coach for a newspaper, and his insights came from coaching journalists who gathered and wrote stories every day. All writers learn these things, but Murray made them explicit for the first t…
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