Dreaming of a Writing Assistance Tool “For Every One”
It happens every year and this year was no different. Shortly after the bell rang I welcomed students in with Jason Reynolds’s poem “For Every One” in which he urges his audience to become what they already are — dreamers.
We are all dreamers on that first day of school but dreams have a tendency to fade out of existence if we don’t gather them and write them down. So, forgoing the usual icebreaker activities, I invited the dreamers in my classroom to gather something to write with and something to write on. Then asked them to follow me to the football field where we could enjoy the beautiful weather, remain six feet apart, and capture our dreams.
On the field, I asked them to all stand on the goal line and look at the end zone 100 yards in the distance. It seemed a long way. Then, imagining each yard maker as a year of their life, we walked to the yardage matching our ages. Most of my students stopped between the 17- and 18-yard markers — I made the slow trek to the 44th-yard line. From there they were better able to envision where they have been, are now, and where they would like to go.
We wrote our literacy journeys — the roots that brought us here and the branches where we thought we could stretch ourselves. We wrote about our relationships with reading and writing recalling our literacy challenges and capturing the sparks that ignited our passions.
Lifting the idea from Reynolds “For Every One,” I asked students to do the following as they wrote:
- Listen to your heart and don’t be afraid to answer the call of the dreams you find there;
- Ignore the whispers that say you can’t or you won’t or you’re not good enough;
- Find within yourself the determination that no one else can help you find;
- Look into the mirror and like what you see — in you I see value. You matter; and
- Take all of your dreams and write them down. These are your goals. Go ahead — breathe them into existence.
Giving space and time for students to write helped them to, as Tom Romano says, “trust the gush” (Crafting Authentic Voice, 2004). Sage advice that I try to leverage often, yet there comes a time when the “gush” needs seawalls, structure, and style to stand better on its own.
During the next few days while students were setting up their Edublog accounts I held mini-writing conferences with them to get to know them and their writing a bit better. After a five-and-a-half month layover, it isn’t surprising to see some rust in the writing students produce. Their in-process writing contained generalized descriptions, drafty “brain dump” thinking, choppy transitions, and an overall focus on being “done” with the writing task. Still, there was writing and it gave each of us a chance to hone our craft.
It also gave us a chance to explore Writable as a writing assistance tool. Writable claims to improve student writing using “writing-feedback looping,” “peer review,” “self-reflection,” “AI feedback,” and “teacher-created prompts and goals.” Though the literacy journeys written by my students were low-risk writing tasks they were also pieces that offered a great opportunity to practice with Writable.
After creating an assignment in Writable I asked students to copy and paste their work into the embedded Google Document and encouraged them to work on the following skills: specific diction, paragraph structure, transitions, and revision.
My 12th-grade students noticed that the AI was able to recognize most of the skills that students were asked to work on. However, it didn’t just point out the errors, it also offered them positive feedback on what they were doing well. Students were also encouraged to offer peer review which gave me a chance to share a mini-lesson on comments as a genre. Writable also kept track of which students offered feedback and which students did not. As a teacher that feedback helped me to know who to conference with a bit longer than others.
In short, students were able to “trust the gush” of initial writing, reflect on their literacy journeys, receive teacher-led writing conferences, practice with a writing assistance tool, consider comments as a genre, respond to peer feedback, and experience writing success from the first piece they crafted. Was it a perfect scenario? No. But, it did allow each piece to have more than one set of eyes on their document which brought an authentic audience for a low-risk writing task that eased each writer into writing with vulnerability in mind.
Students don’t often verbalize their literacy goals let alone write them down and make them concrete. When they do they learn to own their goals and strive toward what they see for themselves as achievable. As one student put it “I know this year will be crazy adjusting to the new hybrid model of learning but I think this will push me to work hard to reach my reading and writing goals.” I agree.
This year is one with “crazy adjust[ments]” for students and teachers, however, if teachers are able to focus on student writing that is agentive, authentic, and reflective I imagine they will find their students will realize the dreams nestled in the goals they set for themselves. Though they may not meet these goals every day, they will make progress — however small or significant — if teachers offer them space and time to write, revise, offer feedback, and respond to that feedback. In this case, Writable was a helpful writing assistance tool. I am interested to see how else it may benefit student writers.
REFERENCES
My Literacy Journey — AP Lit Blogfolio. https://lrupe2.edublogs.org/2020/09/03/my-literacy-journey/#comments. Accessed 16 Sept. 2020.
Romano, Tom. Crafting Authentic Voice. Heinemann, 2004.
