Robert Burgard LLED 412W PoP Paper Generating Writing in the Classroom When looking at the state of writing

among students today, its hard not to think negatively. What with texting, blogging and other forms of digital social media, students have a hard time creating genuine writing in the classroom. Current students are living in the most stimulating time period of any other in history, and that is reflecting in their learning. Why bother writing an essay when they can watch four seasons of The Vampire Diaries on Netflix instead? It isnt that kids cant write; rather, that there are a large number of distractors vying for their attention that make it difficult for students to want to write. I believe that by implementing a more student centered approach to writing that incorporates exigency, the use of low stakes writing, giving choice, and producing writing through a defined process, teachers can present situations where students will create authentic writing. Creating situations in the classroom where writing gains importance is perhaps one of the most critical projects a teacher can undertake: perhaps the largest of them all. Before discussing how educators can get kids writing, the first problem an English teacher must tackle is to figure out why the students are writing at all. It is critical to have exigency before students create any kind of writing, whether high or low stakes. Without a why students have no reason to be writing at all. Simply telling them that its for your grade gives only a few students, typically the high achievers, a reason to write. This leaves out the rest of the class, the lower-level achievers, who will not put forth their best writing without a good reason. So why have them write at all? Why have your students put together an analysis of The Scarlet Letter in the first place? What are educators trying to accomplish by having their

2 students write on these topics? Perhaps it is to further their understanding of literary devices, or to read deeper into a text so that they learn to pull out critical information in their future career. Whatever the reason at hand, having an exigence makes all the difference to students. Surprisingly, little of the writing I came across while researching this paper dealt with the question of why. It was all about how, or what to do in regards to getting students to write. Not to sleight the importance of the research done on the field of writing, but I feel that not discussing the why is doing a major disservice to our students. We as teachers need to understand why we are having our students write, and convey this to them, so that they create meaningful writings as well as learn. Without context or reason, there is no purpose behind their writings, and it simply becomes a blind exercise where nothing is gained on their side. I believe that the reason behind not understanding the why of writing comes from the fact that writing is an extremely personal action. We can come at it from the perspective of an analyst and ask, what benefits are there to knowing why you write? but I dont believe thats the right way to go about it. Terry Tempest Williams says: I write to make peace with the things I cannot control. I write to create fabric in a world that often appears black and white. I write to discover (Williams). Williams writes to have the world make sense, to discover, and to see anew. How can we as teachers incorporate those ideas into our own exigency behind student writing? It is not easy understanding why, but it is of the utmost importance to our students. A lack of a strong exigence became very detrimental for the first paper my students wrote. I had them write either a character analysis or a thematic analysis about The Scarlet Letter. My purpose behind this was for them to learn how to pull out key facts and quotations and use that to support an opinion. While I understood what I wanted them to do, I failed to communicate my own reasons for this and connect it to them. When the papers came rolling in, I

3 found that a few students had done excellent work, and I could tell they had truly worked hard on the paper. However, there were a large number of papers where I could tell the quality of work did not match up to the work they had done earlier in the marking period. I chalk this up to, in addition to their lack of experience with analyses, my failure to communicate my reasoning behind the essay. Had they known how doing this paper would impact their future, and give them a powerful skill in not only their English class but in life, I believe I would have received papers of higher quality and effort. This lends itself to the question of how can teachers transmit the why to our students. One way that this can be accomplished is through simple explanation. By laying out to the students why it is important to do the writing, they will understand where the teacher is coming from. Another method to employ is by having a discussion about the project. Ask the students what they think the exigency behind the project is, and use that as a platform towards understanding the reasons behind the writing. With my students, I plan to make this an integral part of the writing, because I believe that if they understand my purpose behind assigning the writing, they will be able to produce more authentic writings. Once teachers understand their own exigency behind writing, and can explain that to their students, the next issue is how to get them writing. One highly effective means of accomplishing this is called low stakes writing. Low stakes writing is often informal and tends to be graded informally. In a sense, we get to throw away the low stakes writing itself but keep the neural changes it produced in the students heads (Elbow). For example, I use low stakes writing at the start of the period to have them think about the topic for the period. During my The Scarlet Letter unit, I would occasionally start the class off with a question that would take around five minutes to answer, in order to get their brains working for the discussion that would follow.

4 After the five minutes were up I would call on students to share their responses, and this in turn would generate discussion. Sometimes I would collect their writings and give them participation points, but for the most part I wouldnt grade their low stakes writings. But if theyre not being graded why do it at all? According to Peter Elbow, there are many reasons why low stakes writing is extremely helpful for students. Writing permits us to keep our words private or to revise them before showing them to anyone else (Elbow), and as such, it gives students a venue to formulate and wrestle with ideas on their own before bringing it before the class. As my professor Nicole Olcese says: we need to give our students time to think before we ask them to respond. This is a mantra every teacher should keep in the back of their mind because the best responses come after giving students the time to think. By allowing students to think, write, and rewrite their ideas before sharing, teachers are giving them the chance to come up with the best response possible. While it isnt necessarily essay-worthy, it may be the first step in formulating an essay topic, or a thesis. Low stakes writing gets students thinking about the topic in an assessment free environment, thus reducing the stress and perhaps allowing them to think more freely than they would if faced with an essay. Jim Burke furthers the idea of low stakes writing as a tool for thought by introducing the idea of chunking. In chunking, students create a visual of the ideas they want to explore, whether in a class or in a formal essay. Here, students get to create what Burke calls units of thought wherein students research a topic and figure out how many paragraphs to devote in order to develop their writing focus (Burke, 2013 p. 88). Students can explore this step without writing actual paragraphs, but low stakes, smaller units that help them to organize their ideas. Chunking leads directly into the idea that low stakes writing also improves the quality of students high stakes writing. According to Elbow, by assigning frequent low stakes pieces, we

5 ensure that students have already done lots of writing before we have to grade a high stakes pieceso that they are already warmed up and more fluent. By assigning low stakes writing on a topic it allows students to get their ideas out early, and in turn, this articulates what they want to say before they have to say it in a high stakes essay. Framing a low stakes writing activity with discussion further allows the students to gain practice with their topic before a high stakes assignment. Students can ask each other for help with their topic by discussing their responses with a partner, or with the class. Low stakes writing creates an opportunity to explore a topic before it becomes the subject of a paper, and thus gives students a better chance at success. Another benefit of low stakes writing is that it is a good way to check student understanding during the course of a unit. We as teachers can get a better sense of the interactions between their course material and their thinking about other realms of their life, between their thinking and feeling (Elbow). Low stakes writing typically involves some sort of discussion of how the student felt or thought about the reading at hand. By knowing where the students are in relation to the text, teachers can better understand what is going well in the lessons, and what needs to be fixed to promote better comprehension. Low stakes writing is a great diagnostic tool for teachers, as it is also a way to track whether or not the students are actually doing their reading for class. Low stakes writing is one way to generate genuine writing in a classroom setting; however, another method of doing so put forth by Katherine Curran (2011) is giving students a choice when it comes to writing. She writes that: a major reason why students are reluctant to fully participate in assignments is simple, we arent tapping into their passions (Curran, 7). This cycles back to the issue of student attention in regards to writing. The average paper doesnt deal with anything students actually want to write about. It takes a special kind of person

6 to actually want to perform an in-depth character analysis of a novel such as Wuthering Heights as an assignment, let alone out of their own free will. While we cant simply allow students to write about whatever they want on their essays, giving them a choice of topics helps create a sense of agency. Even a choice as small as picking a topic gives students a sense of free will in their project, making them more likely to be invested in their essay. Curran puts it best: students will excel only when they are allowed to engage with material that they feel is important or relevant. By giving a choice of topic, students feel that their topic is important and relevant, in turn giving them a better chance to excel. While both low stakes writing and choice are great ways to generate writing, Jim Burke discusses that by treating writing as a process as opposed to simply creating a product, students will be able to work towards creating genuine writing. By treating writing as a process with steps, students will be given the time to work with their topic, discuss it, and rework it until the writing is effective and robust. This gets the students more engaged in their writing, and more attached to it in a way that promotes better understanding and stronger writing. The steps Burke outlines in his book are as follows: gather and generate ideas; design and draft the text; review and revise the text; proofread and publish the text; reflect and remember (Burke 77-78). While the steps are outlined as a process, Burke makes it evident that all the steps are important to reevaluate throughout the process, stating that: writers shouldas a result of further reading, discussing, or inquiringcontinue to seek out and evaluate new ideas or refine those they already had as they learn more (Burke 77). By being involved in the process and treating the writing not just as a once and done piece, but as something to return to and reflect upon when new information arises, he suggests that it will increase engagement in the piece as a whole.

7 The first step in the process, gather and generate ideas, concerns the act of gathering information, creating ideas, and discovering the essence of the paper. It should be done not just as a prewriting gathering of information, but continually performed so that new ideas help formulate the paper. By constantly seeking new details the writer becomes more invested in the topic, in turn generating something far more genuine thanks to the time and effort they put in. With my students, this step is crucial, and typically done altogether in class. By having students work collaboratively among themselves, they can learn together, and figure questions out on their own. Also, having the teacher around to point students in the right direction can be very helpful when first exploring a topic. Not only does it help them to flesh out ideas, but it also forces them to think of a rationale before having to put it down into their paper. Once again, exigency is important to paper writing because it informs not only what will go into the paper, but give the students a suitable reason to be writing the paper at all. Second in the process is to design and draft the text. Here, an outline can be made, or the paper is simply written. The format is constantly reevaluated and changed as the writer goes on, further increasing writer involvement in the paper. Its design shouldnt be static, but constantly evolving throughout the entire process, and should reflect peer reviews and other forms of feedback given to the writer. In this phase I have my students perform a peer review, where I have a handout with questions on it that the writer and a peer collaborator must answer together. Through this process the students can help each other flesh out their exigence, as well as find technical errors in each others papers. The third part in the process is reviewing and revising the text. Here, the writer reviews what they have done so far for errors, as well as reading over the paper with future readers in mind. This puts students into the mindset of their audience, and asks them to evaluate what their

8 writing has accomplished, and if it was effective at what they set out to do. By questioning their own writing, students can discern how well or how poorly they have written their own papers. Here is where the post-peer review process come in handy, because the feedback helps students to face their own writing in a new way: that of the audience members. Additionally, selfreflection will aid the student because it gives them self-generated feedback that they can use to improve the paper. Once again, by becoming embroiled in a process, students will be more attached to their writing, in turn generating an authentic work. Fourth in the process is proofreading and publishing the text. This part is a last glance to catch errors and other glaring issues in the paper before it is finally handed in for assessment. Students get one last look at their work, then they must accept that its finished as Burke puts it (Burke 78). This leads to the final phase of reflection and remembering. The paper may be handed in, but looking back on what was accomplished and learned is very important for the students. This is where teachers learn what the students have learned and what they have taken away from the process. Writing as a process allows students to become intimate with a topic and begin to understand themselves as writers. They constantly work and rework their papers in the process, getting feedback as they go. This involvement allows the students ample time to say what they want to say and create an authentic representation of themselves as writers. As a teacher, it is important to get students to actively think about their writing, and by using a process they will actually have to think about and reflect upon their writing. This in turn creates genuine writing that reflects the student as a learner and a person. One way to get students to be constantly thinking about their writing, and continuously reevaluating it, is to have them keep a writing portfolio. I use them in my own classroom as a

9 means for the students to look back on their old writings, and see what they can improve upon in the next paper. Additionally, writing portfolios are a great way for students to evaluate their progress at the end of the year, and to see just how much they have grown as writers. It seems impossible to get students to care with all the distractions modern society presents. Texting, Vines, Tumblingall sorts of more entertaining means of communicating are available to them, so why should they care about writing a paper? They dont realize the writing and communicating they are doing is actually writing, so how can teachers bridge the gap? By implementing a more student centered approach to writing by giving them purpose, using low stakes writing, giving choice, and presenting them with writing as a process, teachers can give students the tools to create authentic writing and become better, more genuine writers.

10 Works Cited Burke, Jim (2013). The English Teachers Companion. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Curran, Katherine (2011). How to Create Authentic Writing in the Classroom: A Comparative Study of American and Swedish Public School Students (Honors Thesis). Retrieved from the Penn State CAT. Elbow, Peter. High Stakes and Low Stakes In Assigning and Responding to Writing. In New Directions for Teaching and Learning (pp. 5-13), 1997. Williams, Terry Tempest. Why I Write. Retrieved from: http://rvannoy.asp.radford.edu/rvn/312/whyiwrite.pdf