Tips From a Writing Teacher #1
How a set of notecards changed my teaching career.
Check out my series “Tips from a Writing Teacher” for more posts like this!
During my first year as an educator, my district had a problem. Students were really struggling with their writing. Scores on state testing were below where they needed to be, but many students were also struggling with completing grade-level work to a level that would get them the credits needed to graduate high school. Students could not write as they needed to be able to.
As a department, we brainstormed ideas to help the students who were struggling the most. We created graphic organizers. We broke down formal writing into smaller parts. We (or at least we thought) created high-interest writing prompts that would engage students to do their best work. Nothing seemed to work.
For whatever reason, I always seem to be the teacher responsible for teaching English to most of the student-athletes in our building. As a coach myself, I always loved it. I thought about this problem through a coach's lens instead of a teacher's. If you want to get better at something, you have to practice. If students were ever going to write better, they would need to do more of it and receive more specific, individualized feedback on it. Instead of focusing on formal writing…
