Helping students become better writers

Susan, from Ben­ning­ton VT, writes, “As a new lan­guage arts teacher can you sug­gest a cou­ple of ways to help my stu­dents become bet­ter writers?” 

1. Beyond all else, what­ev­er the grade, read dai­ly to your stu­dents: books that are well writ­ten, dra­mat­ic, engag­ing, and emotional. 

2. Do not allow your­self to be the ulti­mate read­er of what your stu­dents write. This is to say, become the edi­tor, or facil­i­ta­tor of what your stu­dents write, mak­ing sure that what they write is read by oth­er peo­ple beyond you. Per­haps it’s a month­ly, or bi-month­ly mag­a­zine of your stu­dents’ writ­ing. With var­i­ous com­put­er pub­lish­ing pro­grams, your stu­dents can turn their writ­ing into good look­ing pages. 

This col­lec­tion of writ­ings (by all) stu­dents is then sent home or shared with oth­er class­es. The point is to get your stu­dents to think of writ­ing in terms of many peo­ple read­ing their work. You will cease being the per­son who assigns the grade, and become the per­son who helps them get a good response to their writing.