It happened in a moment: I was teaching a mini-lesson on adding content to personal narratives when I caught a hint of glaze-over in the eyes of several of my students. I quickly ran through my method: show personal enthusiasm for the topic—check; engage students by allowing them to work in pairs, allow rehearsal of writing through talking—check and check (Ray, 2004). Communicate clear objectives … check? Maybe that was it. I paused and asked myself the question that would change my practice forever: Why is this lesson important for our work? I had assumed the correct response was "So we can get a better grade on the benchmark." My students were lethargic from the kind of instruction that leaves one basically fed, but unnourished.
No wonder I didn't see it. All but a few were performing well. They could apply the strategies and organize their stories with a standard beginning, middle, and end. They were in it for the grades and grades they got. But the craving wasn't there. They didn't have the passion to move beyond the required work, and they certainly didn't see any connection between their work and the world.
I needed to find a way to reach every writer in the room. It wasn't enough to simply deliver instruction like a bag of take-out dropped at their feet. I needed to make them part of the production from the ground up. To do this, I enlisted the help of a colleague who was willing to take on a project neither of us had tried before. We would combine our classrooms to create a "publishing house" that would publish magazines for a real audience. What better way to motivate our students than to actually create a product for real consumers (Fox, 2001; Ray, 2006)?
Know Your Audience
We started with analysis. We placed an assortment of kid magazines around the room for a rotation of close study (Ray, 2006). What did the students find compelling about these publications? At once the conversation ignited. Words like … cool … exciting … awesome … cute … swirled around our circle. I took note that these were not the words we generally heard. We were often asked, Is this good enough? Am I done?
So we made an announcement: your teacher is NOT your ideal audience (Fox, 2001)! In the real world, writers don't think about grades; they think about connecting to a specific audience (Fox, 2001). Real writers choose who they are writing for. We analyzed the age, gender, and interests of their real audiences. Our lessons became grounded in a mission to construct a world that mattered for them. Will the word choice be too easy or difficult? Is this what you want your reader to see? How do you want your reader to feel? Grammar mattered! Students were choosing sentence types based on the reading level of their reader. For the first time, we noticed even the most reluctant writers giving serious thought to their choices.
For struggling writers we encouraged writing for a younger audience by using simpler structures and easier vocabulary, so that they could be in a position of authority. It was by choice that they could write sentences that were perhaps not as complex as their peers, but they were writing with mastery at their level for a purpose. They had a reason to be less sophisticated, which would be justified in the eyes of their peers. Confidence was up. Choosing a real audience had done something new for our classes—it put everyone on an equal playing field.
Talk: The Main Ingredient
Our students were excited to talk about their audiences, but they needed our specific questioning, observations, and suggestions to get started. Peer conferencing was the key. Students would share their work and discuss the specific choices they made for their intended audiences. We established small writing groups as their working audiences—the readers that would support the writing process even if the members of the group were not the intended public audience (Elbow, 1981).
We gave the instruction and even did a little looks-like/sounds-like demonstration. Our writers seemed excited to share their work and off they went—for about three minutes. They could share a sentence or two about their intended public audience, but conversations quickly declined to shallow compliments, such as "That's good." They were confused about what they should be talking about. Peer conferencing, as we soon found out, was not increasing the motivation in our writing workshop. Students began to compare—or more accurately—judge their work against their peers. Some became shy once again, and sharing diminished to simple recitation and polite acknowledgment.
We realized that our writers lacked a sense of expertise. It was easy to discuss their writing with their teachers because we structured the conversation and provided direction to their ultimate destination. They needed a road map to make their conversations with peers productive. They needed a common vocabulary. If we wanted our classroom to function as a publishing house, we would have to teach them the words of the trade. For this, we turned to something unexpected: the Pennsylvania Writing Domains Rubric.
I have to admit, the PA writing rubric made me grumpy. I saw it as a symbol of what I fundamentally opposed—writing for a test. I rewrote the rubrics in kid-friendly language that included "I" statements and checklists for students to use after they finished writing.
Reading the rubric after the fact did nothing to motivate my writers; it did just the opposite. It provided a way to compare their work against a running checklist to make sure they were on track for the A. The grade seekers had their list and the struggling students had rules of do's- but- can'ts.
But what if the categories of the PA writing domains—focus, organization, content, and style—could actually be used to plan the writing? The rubric could provide a way to categorize the elements of their work to help students think and talk in specific, ordered terms that everyone could use—if they were explicitly taught to use them.
We began to build a new working vocabulary that students could apply to our analyses of texst that would help them improve their sense of control over the kinds of choices they would make for their audiences. We sequenced our minilessons to address these areas and explicitly taught which category the lesson aligned to. We used charts to name and track the lessons. Once again, a sense of expertise ignited our writing conversations. We could task our writers to confer about targeted elements of their writing. Students were given domain-specific conferencing forms to scaffold their feedback and give something tangible to their partners. We heard comments like, "I can really understand your point," and "You might want to think about adding a quote to your content," and "I think you could expand this section of your article." They had something real to contribute to their fellow writers and readily accepted feedback because this new language brought a professional objectivity to the table. It was safe, but creativity could thrive.
Domain: Focus
Remember the hamburger paragraph you learned in second grade? The topic sentence is the top bun, the conclusion is the bottom bun, and the details are in the middle. Early on, that is how I might have presented a basic planning strategy for writing. The problem was, I have never once made a sandwich for no reason, and neither had our students. Making a sandwich is a lot like writing: it is created for a specific purpose, for an intended audience, and for a definitive reason. A tea sandwich says the consumer is at a formal event and the maker wants to bring a sense of elegance to the affair. A juicy burger with the works says dig in, let's have some fun, and don't mind a little ketchup on the chin. You wouldn't serve a tea sandwich at a barbeque, and you wouldn't serve a Whopper at four o'clock tea.
We studied the work of writers in the same genres that we were trying to work in, and then asked focus question about audience, purpose, and point. Who is this for? Why did the author write this? What is the writer saying about the topic? Analyzing the work of other authors using this specific language prepares students to clarify their topics and purposes for writing. When it is time to plan the writing, students have a clear starting point. Motivation is higher because students can speak specifically about their first choices.
Domain: Organization
Not all sandwiches are built the same way. Students need to know that the organization of a piece holds the work together like the outer layers of a sandwich. How writers organize their work directly relates to the audience and the reason for the piece.
We taught students explicit text structures that are appropriate for each task. They mapped out their plan with appropriate graphic organizers and provided the main ideas for each section of their piece. The working audience for each writer would try to map out the written piece as they would a reading assignment. If the maps didn't quite match, writers would be able to engage in a meaningful conversation about how to improve it.
Domain: Content
So what exactly is inside that sandwich? The possibilities are endless, but the choices need to make sense for the audience. Again, it is important to analyze similar work and provide specific instruction using appropriate choices that students have already encountered (Ray, 2006).
For our work on feature articles, we observed elements of content in an article we were using as our study text—engaging lead, facts, quotes from an expert, research, direct questions to the reader, specific examples that supported the main idea, and descriptions. We made a list of these elements on a chart titled Ideas for Content. We required a few, but students knew they didn't have to include every item on the list—they could choose. Writing partners could make suggestions or specific observations about one another's writing.
Domain: Style
So what makes us want to dig in and devour that staple of American cuisine? It's the look, the appeal to the senses, the way all the elements come together with balance and … style! Kids are natural experts on style. Their first observations of text speak almost exclusively about style. Our close study emphasized the tone of an article: was it casual or formal? Do you feel like the writer is talking directly to you like a friend or like an expert on a topic? Our students were beginning to talk about "wanting to sound like …." For the first time, many were seeing that style was not something that just came naturally to smarter kids; style was, like all elements of writing, a choice.
The Takeaway
Our students were hungry. They craved a sense of control and purpose. As educators, the concept of student choice was not new to my colleagues and me. But in our writing workshop, the teacher-as-expert dynamic was working only to help our students complete writing assignments—not to motivate them to be writers. They wanted to feel like experts of their own writing processes by knowing their options. We learned that when we taught our students to see their writing as a product to share and taught them how to talk about their choices, they felt empowered. Our students felt invited to join us at the table instead of passing through the drive-thru. It was a long and satisfying meal that left us all full.