On Teaching Writing

Our belief in mentorship reverberates beyond the interpersonal relationship between teacher and students. We extend our belief in mentorship to our teaching of writing. We use mentor texts to engage students in examining how ideas are encoded in print. These ideas can be as utilitarian as the naming of objects, or more complex such as the narration of an experience, the declaration of an opinion, and/or the expression of a human emotion through poetry.

We teach writing as an iterative process that may be presented as linear in an academic setting, but in the authentic world, we recognize may be non-linear. As is true in speaking, students are knowledgeable about how writing moves and choices begin with a specific purpose and may or may not succeed depending on their impact on the audience. All texts can be created by students at all stages of their English language learning journey. Paired with mentor texts, we name writing moves using student-centered/friendly language that will help both teacher and student bring attention to techniques and “writing moves” so that modeling, focused practice, and feedback are facilitated and more fluid. We are intentional about explicitly teaching the language of feedback so that students can use each other as writing resources, and eventually, move towards being effective self-monitors of their own choices as writers. We are also intentional about providing ample opportunities in our curriculum for students to give and receive feedback on their writing before publishing. The naming of writing moves is integral to scaffolding as it can also facilitate the drafting of sentence frames, paragraph frames, or stems. These too are integral to scaffolding.