What does the phrase “motivating students to write” mean to you?
I feel that if you are motivating a student to write they gain that willingness to write. They don’t necessarily have to be engaged the whole time. They could be motivated intrinsically or extrinsically. If they are motivated intrinsically they writing for reasons like wanting to write/loving to write. If they are motivated extrinsically they are writing because they have to or they will get in trouble or get a bad grade. They may also be swayed by awards such as prizes or whoever gets finished can work with a puzzle. Students may even get to help out other students when they finish early. This would motivate them extrinsically.
I hope that I motivate my students to write through modeling. We like to write silly/frightening stories together. I think it motivates them whenever I gather their ideas into a bubble map, write a catchy beginning, and let them finish the story. It’s amazing how different their stories turn out. It seems as though my students would rather work collaboratively on writing than independently.
If you are interested in something and care deeply about it, does that mean that it will also be interesting to write about?
I do not think it would necessarily be interesting to write about because students may love playing basketball but have a hard time putting into words how they feel, play, or just love to watch basketball. It’s great to pick an interesting topic for the students to write about but they will always come up with the famous quote, “I don’t know what to write about.” I get that all of the time when we do free writing in our journals. It’s like they are trained to gather ideas from a grown up. It’s hard for young children to think up ideas on their own.
When you think of helping students experience writing as a tool of communication, do you also help them experience writing as a social activity-the notion that we share ideas, discuss them and even provide feedback about the ideas? How can this happen in your classroom?
I feel that we write socially. The students will write about their weekends on Mondays. Then they get to share their writings with one another, if time permits. As I stated above we do a lot of brainstorming together to get some ideas flowing into their heads. I now teach fourth grade but last year my first graders loved sharing ideas. They would come up with some wonderful ideas for certain themes in which we were carrying out that particular month/week. We once wrote a story together about a creepy house with a big monster living in the house. I would discuss what an adjective was and have the students to come up with some great adjectives to describe in detail. I let each student give me one sentence which stemmed from the previous child’s sentence. They came up with an awesome story.
Do you strive to make student writing tasks worthwhile, useful, collaborative, authentic, and interesting? If so, how might this happen in your classroom?
I feel as though, like anyone else, I could always do a better job teaching writing. That is something that gets touched on in first grade because of the incredible amounts of reading time throughout the day. Since I am in fourth grade this year I am striving to take ideas and feedback from my team teachers since they’re more experienced. I am totally baffled with knowing what I’m doing in fourth grade. However, I’m trying my best to be the best teacher possible. I think I could use my planning time wisely with other teachers to make sure I was following my students’ writing skills and going over any problems along the way.
Are there any discrepancies between the Graves’ article and Chapter 10?
I feel as though Chapter 10 said that students could be interested in a subject and still not be motivated to write about that subject whereas in Graves’ article the children were most always motivated to write about things they were interested in.
