I suspect you might have reacted the same, just now. We are so used to thinking of writing as a lonely occupation that we forget its innate nature as communication. A writer puts words on paper hoping someone else will read them. That is as true of novelists as of newspaper columnists.

The anecdote above reveals one other thing common to writers: the need for feedback. With novelists, much of that feedback comes from an editor once a draft is finished. But after hanging out with novelists for years, I’m coming to recognize that feedback often means discussion among the writers themselves.

Note that feedback among writers—including student writers—accomplishes more than simply fixing the textual problem of the moment. It also promotes the identification and sharing of tricks and techniques. I add “identification” because sometimes it is only in expressing knowledge to someone else that we fully recognize it ourselves.

As the world moves forward into the future, the image of the solitary writer in the lonely room will become more and more outdated. Even in scholarly pursuits, collaboration is becoming increasingly the norm. Quality feedback helps to shorten the time needed for a piece of writing, and the writer him- or herself, to mature. This is what makes workshopping so important for a writing classroom.

—Les

“The universe of discourse is broad indeed and ranges from utilitarian and scientific uses of language to the most artful and playful literature. Likewise, it extends from public communication to private self-communication. Students need to learn how to compose and comprehend the spectrum.”

—James Moffett, co-author of Student-Centered Language Arts, K-12

In earlier posts—including “The Importance of Authenticity,” “Words of Wisdom,” and “Writing Workshop: The Only Way to Go“—I’ve discussed features of effective writing instruction. Three features stand out above all of the others:

1. Students write about topics that truly interest them. (Otherwise, they won’t invest enough “quality time” in their work.)
2. Students work together in a writers’ workshop in much the same way that artists work together in a studio setting. (Writing becomes infectious—in the good way—when the whole class is writing, researching, and responding.)
3. Students publish most of their writing. (Writing for practice is just another form of busy work, and a big turn off, for most middle school and high school students.)

In this post, I’d like to add another feature into the mix—having students experiment with different forms of writing. I’m not talking about paragraphs, essays, reports, and stories as such. What I have in mind is much more thoughtful and wide-ranging: a sequence of forms extending from “utilitarian” to “artful” and from private to public. The brainchild of such a sequence, known as his universe of discourse, is educator James Moffett.

Moffett’s sequence covers most types of writing done in our world, and it is arranged, in very general terms, from writing that is immediate and personal to writing that becomes progressively more remote and reflective. Here is a general overview of this sequence as presented in Moffett’s book Active Voices II.

Writing Done in Our World

	Taking Down
		Journals and diaries

	Looking Back (Recollection)
		Personal narratives
		Phase autobiographies
		Memoir writing
		Personal profiles

	Looking Into (Investigating)
		Reporting
		Family anecdotes
		Phase biographies
		Profiles of businesses
		Research articles

	Thinking Up (Imagination)
		Dreams
		Jokes
		Poems
		Stories
		Plays

	Thinking Over (Reflection)
		Dialogues of ideas
		Statements through stories
		Newspaper writing
			Reviews
			Editorials
			Columns
		Essays
			Personal essays
			Topic essays

Application: You may simply make copies of the sequence for students and encourage them to experiment with a number of these forms, starting with the more personal ones. Or you may specify a specific number of forms from each category that you expect students to attempt. Then again, you may decide to focus a great deal of attention on one or two of the categories. The choice is yours. Just know that the universe of discourse serves as an excellent writing framework that can be applied in many different ways, for many different purposes.

—Dave

If your students seem to go through the motionswhen they write, perhaps you need to make your assignments more authentic, just as Linda Rief did. This blog will show you how.

Ensuring Authenticity: At the Front End
Students can pretty much say what they want in their personal writing. They’re doing it because they want to, because they have “issues” to sort out or experiences to reflect on. Writing that originates in the classroom is quite another matter. They must approach this writing with much more care and deliberation to make it real. Otherwise, their classroom writing will just be another “’stupid’ exercise.”

To ensure authenticity, have students establish the dynamics for each new project. Students can do this by answering four simple questions about their writing.

The Dynamics of Writing
Subject: What topic should I write about?
Purpose: Why am I writing (to inform, to entertain, to persuade)?
Audience: Who is my intended reader?
Form: What form will my writing take (essay, letter, poem)?

Answering these questions takes the “practice” out of classroom writing. It gives students a context for each new project and makes it real and purposeful. Their essays, articles, and stories will always be on track if they establish their rhetorical stance right at the outset.

Ensuring Authenticity: At the Back End
On another level, you can make writing real in your classroom by expecting students to publish their finished pieces (or at least most of them). Think of publishing as the driving force behind writing. It makes all of a writer’s prewriting, drafting, and revising worth the effort. Publishing is to a writer what a live performance is to a musician or an exhibit is to an artist. It is why they have worked so hard in the first place—to share a finished piece of writing that effectively expresses their thoughts and feelings.

The easiest and perhaps most helpful form of publishing is simply to have students share finished pieces with their writing peers. As writer and educator Tom Liner says, “[Students] learn ways to improve [their] writing by seeing its effect on others.” Make sure that your students know all of their publishing options. Here is a list of publishing ideas that you could share with them.

Publishing Ideas

Performing Sharing their work with peers Reading to other audiences Creating an audio podcast Performing on stage Submitting (in school) School newspaper School Web site Classroom collection Writing portfolio Self-Publishing Personal blog or Web site Family newsletter Greeting cards

Displaying Bulletin boards Display cases School or public library Clinic waiting rooms Literary/Art fairs Submitting (outside of school) Community newspaper Local arts council Writing contests Magazines Church publications Online publications

The Bottom Line: Your students’ writing will be authentic if they (1) write about subjects that truly interest them, (2) establish a rhetorical stance for each new project, and (3) know that they will be publishing their work.

—Dave

“Writing is learned by imitation. If anyone asked me how I learned to write, I’d say I learned by reading the men and women who were doing the kind of writing I wanted to do and trying to figure out how they did it.”

—William Zinsser, author of On Writing Well

Many of America’s best writers—from Mark Twain on—write in a relaxed, somewhat informal style. This style is characterized by four special types of sentences.

1. A loose sentence expresses the main idea near the beginning and adds explanatory details as needed.
   

   “Wil nodded to himself and slipped away, softly as a mouse, toward the back of the house where tourists were never taken.”
   —from “A Room Full of Leaves” by Joan Aiken

2. A balanced sentence includes two or more parts equal in structure, which means that the parts are parallel.
   

   “He goes out onto his baseball field, spins around second base, and looks back at the academy.”
   —from The Headmaster by John McPhee

3. A periodic sentence holds back the most important idea until the end.
   

   “There, hidden in a maze of axles, wheels and springs, it was difficult for policemen or trainmen to find him.”
   —from “Hoboing” by William Z. Foster

4. A cumulative sentence adds life to the main clause by including modifiers before it, after it, or in the middle of it.
   

   “All that winter in the new house, Raymond sat around talking about becoming a big-time farmer, raising lots of kids, making plenty of money, and being his own man.”
   —from Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody

Writers usually work rather unscientifically. They don’t say to themselves, “It’s time to use a loose sentence or a periodic sentence or whatever.” They simply go with what feels right in the heat of writing. It’s another matter, of course, when they revise. Then they will rewrite certain ideas many times until they have the right sound and flow.

In the Classroom
Your students can learn a lot about writing by studying the sentences and passages of some of their favorite authors. When they come across sentences that they really like, they should practice writing sentences of their own that follow the author’s pattern. This process is sometimes called modeling. Share the following guidelines with your students if you’re interested in trying this activity.

Guidelines for Modeling

• Find a sentence or short passage that you would like to use as a model. (You’re looking for loose sentences, periodic sentences, and so on.)
• Copy it in your writing notebook.
• Think of a subject for your practice writing.
• Follow the pattern of the example as you write about your own subject. (You do not have to follow the pattern exactly.)
• Build each sentence one small part at a time.
• Share the results with a classmate.
• Find other sentences or passages to use as models.

Modeling Sample
Here is a smooth-reading sentence from the novel A Solitary Blue by Cynthia Voight. This is an example loose sentence.

“Jeff couldn’t see the musician clearly, just a figure on a chair on the stage, holding what looked like a misshapen guitar.”

Here is a student’s sentence modeled after Voight’s:

“Larisa couldn’t identify the person immediately, just a shadow in the dark alley behind the store, carrying what appeared to be a heavy box.”

Additional Modeling Ideas

• Have your students rewrite one of their stories (or a section of it) to resemble the style of one of their favorite authors.
• Have the students exchange favorite sentences for additional modeling practice.
• Have them search through their own writing for sentences they really like. Then have them rewrite these sentences in different ways.

Implementation: You can make sentence modeling an independent study, of sorts, for those students who seem really interested in it. Or you could make it a warm-up activity for the entire class by supplying daily sentences for students to use as models. Then again, you could develop a complete modeling unit. No matter how you approach it, sentence modeling will help students learn about the craft of writing from the masters.

—Dave

A few thousand years later, the clever folks of Ur developed cuneiform writing. Then people had two options: either say “Ugh” or write “Ugh.” You said it if the person was standing there, and you wrote it if the person wasn’t. The choice was clear.

Now, after another few thousand years, the choices are anything but clear. A modern person can say “Ugh” in person or by phone or via voice mail, can email “Ugh” or IM it or text it or blog it or microblog it.… People nowadays even network “Ugh.” Take a look at MySpace. It’s a million pages of “Ugh,” combining words, pictures, audios, videos, links, games, and clubs.

These are the “new literacies“—all the communication options available to modern people who want to get their “Ughs” across. Many students are already avid users of these new media. What they need is not instruction about how to poke someone on FaceBook but rather instruction about whether to poke someone on FaceBook.

All modern communicators need help deciding the best medium for each message.

Imagine that a young guy named Jason wants to break up with his girlfriend, Staci. How should he deliver his “Ugh?” In a private, face-to-face conversation? Well, that’s a little scary. Jason’s tempted instead to call her cell—you know, say it outside of punching range. But is it right to break up with a girlfriend over the phone? Maybe he should email her? Or write the rejection in a blog posting? Or maybe act it out and post it on YouTube?

After all, Britney Spears broke up with Kevin Federline by texting him.

And what about the fact that Jason and Staci’s relationship has been fully documented on FaceBook? All 1,138 friends of Staci and 85 friends of Jason know the two are an item. How does Jason break the news to them? How soon after leaving a voice-mail message for Staci can he change her FaceBook status to the broken heart? What if Staci sees the FaceBook page before hearing the voice-mail message? What if he doesn’t change her FaceBook status and she goes gonzo on his wall?

Wow! That’s a lot to think about.

To effectively use the new literacies, we must think about each unique communication situation. Here are the parts of the situation along with questions we need to answer before we are ready to choose a medium.

Me: Who am I? (Jason) What’s my role? (I’m the boyfriend.)
You: Who are you? (Staci) What’s your role? (You’re the soon-to-be ex-girlfriend.)
Subject: What’s this message about? (Our relationship)
Purpose: What about our relationship? (I’m ending it.)
Context: Why? (We’ve been going out for two months, but we don’t have a lot in common, and there’s a new girl in second hour.)
Medium: ?

Only by considering the communication situation can Jason really see that the only appropriate medium is a private, face-to-face conversation. Of course, if we change just one variable in the communication situation, the choice of medium changes.

Context: Why? (After you stole my last paycheck and set my house on fire, Staci, I’m less attracted to you.)

Aha. Now the best medium is not a private, face-to-face conversation but a restraining order. As Mitch Hedberg once said, “I don’t have a girlfriend. I just know a girl who would be very angry to hear me say that.”

Or imagine changing the subject of the situation.

Subject: What is this message about? (My afternoon workout)

Okay, so now Jason’s telling Staci he’s ending his afternoon workout. Suddenly, the communication options are wide open. (Of course, if he really needs to work out, maybe Staci will have to prepare her own break-up message.)

The upshot is that instead of trying to teach students how to use new literacies (a subject that many of them understand much better than we do), we should be teaching them how to use a very old literacy—rhetoric. By analyzing the rhetorical situation, students can learn to select the form of communication that best fits themselves, their audience, their subject, and their purpose. It’s the best way to keep things from turning “Ugh”ly.

—Rob

Why didn’t they share in my enthusiasm? Why weren’t they curious about the words they use? I didn’t have any meaningful answers at the time (so many years ago), but I do now. Everything in the unit came from me. I was, in a sense, just another textbook, presenting a set of facts and details for students to learn. When instruction becomes too teacher-directed or too curriculum-directed, most students will either passively follow along, or they will simply tune out. This is especially true for middle-school and high-school students, who are ready for more direct involvement in the development of the coursework.

In a recent entry, “That’s a Good Question,” I made reference to Matthew Kay’s essay about the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia. According to Kay, the school has created a wonderful learning environment in which teachers and students build the curriculum together based on asking questions (the inquiry approach). Students feel such ownership in the academy that they’re never in a hurry to leave at the end of a school day, even on a Friday afternoon.

This week I found another article, “Exploring Inquiry as a Teaching Stance in the Writing Workshop,” in the September 30 NCTE Inbox, dealing with the inquiry approach. In the article, Katie Wood Ray explains how shared inquiry changes the teacher-learner dynamic because (1) instruction is far less teacher-directed and (2) the curriculum becomes far more organic, a result of questioning and exploring. Ray points out that the inquiry approach “repositions the curriculum as the outcome of instruction rather than as the starting point.” Naturally students are more involved and more interested in such a process.

So how might you use this approach in your writing classes? Here are two things that you can do immediately:

1. Turn your classroom into a writing workshop—a method of instruction that gives students more ownership of their work than they would have in a traditional classroom. The freedom that is associated with a workshop appeals to students and connects them more meaningfully to the coursework.
2. Approach the curriculum inductively—as the end result of shared
   inquiry by you and your students. Working in this way will give students more say in their learning.

Shared Inquiry in Action
In Ray’s article, she describes the following study in a fifth-grade writing workshop. The teacher brought in 14 op/ed pieces by Leonard Pitts and Rich Reilly, both popular writers. The first step was to get everyone to read and to know the pieces. Then the class did a closer study of the texts through shared inquiry, and in the process, created a list of key features exhibited in the writing. The students, empowered by their discoveries, were then ready and eager to write their own op/ed pieces. With this project, the teacher didn’t decide beforehand what had to be learned about op/ed writing; rather, she let that evolve during the shared reading and questioning.

Another Idea
In a graduate linguistic class (again, many years ago), I remember one student, who was a teacher herself, asking how she could use linguistics to help her high school students understand grammar. The instructor thought awhile and came up with this idea, an immersion of sorts: She said to think of a point of grammar—say, subject-verb agreement with indefinite pronouns. Next, provide students with a list of sentences containing indefinite pronouns used as subjects. Then using shared inquiry, determine what is happening in these sentences, what patterns seem apparent. List the students’ observations on the board, and from this list, come to an agreement on a rule or standard for the concept. This seems like a wonderful way to approach grammar because it’s based directly on the students’ input and observations.

That was then; this is now: If I were planning a vocabulary unit today, I would follow my linguistic instructor’s advice and simply start with a few lists of words. Then through shared inquiry, my students and I would see what discoveries we could make about the words. This is a much simpler approach, requiring much less planning on my part, but one that would have been far more meaningful to the students—and far more satisfying to me.

—Dave

Then the old saw, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” casts its shadow on my current happiness, and I wonder how much longer Dobie will be able to take on new learning. Is there some tragic turning point at which his brain will rigidify? Of course, the saying isn’t really about a dog at all, but a cynical opinion about human nature. It suggests that you and I become unable to adapt and learn as age sets in.

Poppycock! Mental rigidity is not an automatic result of aging, but rather of choosing comfort instead of taking a risk. Learning involves the willingness to hazard embarrassment for the joy of new knowledge and skills. That is perhaps most evident when tackling a new language; misspoken words tend to draw laughter, and it takes a childlike innocence to accept that laughter and continue. But it’s also the case when pursuing other knowledges. Four years ago, at age 48, I bought a motorcycle for the first time in my life, and whenever I have to ask my mechanic for advice about it, I feel like an ignoramus. Because on that subject, I am.

If he were to ever confer with me about poetry terms and history, on the other hand…

Of course, even poetry has its masters whose own expertise makes me seem ignorant by comparison. Fortunately, I’m not too proud to learn from them, either. Ignoring embarrassment for the sake of learning something new is a trick this old dog has learned well, and my life is much the richer for it.

—Les

1. It’s a shame to ruin perfectly good literature by force-feeding it to students. Worse, doing so inspires in those students a distaste for reading, so they’ll avoid other good literature in the future.
2. The choice of texts is always motivated by agendas imposed both by cultural assumptions (”Everyone should experience Anne Frank’s story”) and market forces (”Our competitors include ‘Flowers for Algernon’ in their texts, so we can’t afford not to”).

As we travel forward into the Information Age, both of these objections become increasingly significant.

We can’t afford to persuade anyone—not anyone—that reading is dull or onerous. The Information Age depends predominantly upon reading—an active, engaged investigation of collected human knowledge. No one can learn or understand all that collected knowledge, so what is essential is the ability to find what is applicable to the current task, to “mashup” concepts and details in new ways for new insights.

Nor can we assume that a few specific texts will convey a cultural unity the way they once did. The world is growing too small for regionalism. Tomorrow’s citizens—today’s students—must have the skills to recognize a difference of understanding/opinion between themselves and whomever they might meet (from next-door neighbor to a blogger from halfway around the world), to investigate the reasons for that difference, and to use the gathered information to bridge the gap between them.

Notice how similar are the required skills described in both of the previous paragraphs.

Now, having said all that, I’ll make one concession. There is nothing wrong with a teacher introducing a class to a piece of literature of his/her choice—as a fellow reader in a workshop environment. Literature is meant to be shared, as one friend to another.

It just isn’t meant to be imposed, like a regent to his/her subjects.

—Les

By three methods, we may learn wisdom:

First, by reflection, which is noblest;
Second, by imitation, which is easiest;
And third, by experience, which is the bitterest.

—Confucius

The documentary focuses on the rapid modernization that China has experienced and will continue to pursue. Confucius’s words serve as an effective guidepost when attempting to come to terms with the new China: We can reflect upon changes in the country, perhaps compare China’s situation with similar situations, see what unfolds because of the changes, and so on.

Without taking too much of a leap, it struck me that this quotation could serve as the guidepost and/or inspiration for an effective writing program as well. Here’s how I would apply it:

First, by reflection, which is noblest
An effective writing program must provide students with many opportunities to engage in personal writing—or writing that allows them to make sense of their thoughts, beliefs, feelings, and actions. Personal writing can take many forms—journal writing, blog writing, personal narratives, personal essays, poetry, and so on. These forms of writing naturally allow students to reflect.

Reflection should also be an important feature of any academic writing assignment. After students complete an expository essay, a persuasive essay, or a literary analyses, they should be asked to reflect upon their writing experience: What do they like best about their writing? What didn’t turn out quite as well as they would have liked? What did they learn from this writing? What will they do differently next time?

Confucius calls reflecting the “noblest” method of gaining wisdom. Certainly this holds true with writing because what could be nobler than having students think and write for themselves?

Second, by imitation, which is easiest
Skilled writing teachers regularly share with their students well-made writing samples—from short passages to complete articles, narratives, and stories. After a discussion of a particular sample, writing teachers often ask their students to develop their own writing, following the level of detail, structure, voice, and/or sentence style exhibited in the original. This type of writing helps students appreciate the skills of accomplished writers, and it gives them new ways to express themselves in their own writing.

Imitating can also be done on the “quick and easy” by simply writing a well-made sentence on the board and having students write their own version following the structure of the original. If done on a daily basis, this activity can expand the students’ understanding of writing at the sentence level. (See “Daily Sentence Workouts.”)

Confucius calls imitating the “easiest” method of gaining wisdom. Again, this basically holds true when students are writing to imitate because they are following the lead established by someone else (although, I must admit, imitating is not always as easy as it first appears).

And third, by experience, which is bitterest
A third element of an effective writing program is to give students plenty of opportunities to write to share and write to show learning. When students write to share, they are developing articles, essays, stories, poems, and plays for a specific audience (their classmates, family members) or for a specific purpose (entering to a writing contest, submitting to a Web site).

Students write to show learning when they develop academic essays addressing concepts covered in particular content areas and when they answer essay questions on tests. Writing to share or show learning requires a great deal of careful planning, writing, and revising (except, of course, when answering test questions when there is very little time to work).

Confucius calls experiencing the “bitterest” method of gaining wisdom. Certainly writing to share and writing to show learning can lead to disappointment or rejection if, in fact, the students’ finished pieces are not well received (which doesn’t happen very often), not favorably assessed, or not accepted for publication. The hope is that students learn from these experiences and strive to do better on their next writings. That’s when wisdom is gained.

The Bottom Line: If you’re new and interested in building a writing program, consider reflection, imitation, and experience as important aspects to address. If you’ve been around awhile, ask yourself if your students get enough exposure to each one. If not, it may be time to make some changes.

—Dave

A. In the very act of asking that question, I have imposed two assumptions upon you.
    1. You ought to have read The Great Gatsby.
    2. The American Dream is related to an empty and unsatisfying material prosperity.

Maybe you agree with both of those assumptions. That is not the point. I could as easily have asked the following.

Q. True or false: The primary theme of Atlas Shrugged is the hampering of individual excellence by collectivist mediocrity.

A. Again two assumptions:
    1. If you haven’t read Atlas Shrugged, you’re somehow lacking.
    2. Individuals can excel only by escaping the bonds imposed by a mundane common culture.

And again, whether you agree or disagree with those assumptions isn’t the point. The point is that the texts we assign our students and the questions we ask about those texts invariably impose a set of values. Dictating titles and questions may be a more subtle form of cultural manipulation than book banning, but it is hardly more innocent.

Lately, I’ve been perusing textbooks of various literature series for K-12 students, noting common selections, reading the suggested questions and discussion topics. I’m tempted to put these books in a time capsule, so that historians centuries in the future might easily grasp the common assumptions by which we live. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear them use the phrase “lockstep.”

The trouble doesn’t lie in the titles we choose, however. Instead, it is inherent in a lecture mode of teaching, or even a teacher-led discussion. As the adult in the classroom, the person with the most life experience, the most developed vocabulary, we cast the longest shadow.

Somehow, we need to step aside to let the light fall on our students. Somehow we have to nurture a passion for reading and learning without making a bunch of little thought clones. Somehow we have to do all this without losing control of the classroom.

That somehow, according to educators such as Frank Smith and Linda Rief and Nancie Atwell and Donald Graves and others, is to teach literature as part of a writing workshop. Allow students to choose texts according to their own interests. Let me say that again: Allow students to choose what they want to read. Better to lure them into reading through their own interests than to leave them with the impression that all “school reading” is boring. Next, have them explain to their peers why they chose that text, and what they got out of it. Make sure this sharing happens sometimes in small groups, sometimes to the class at large, sometimes orally, sometimes in a more formal piece of writing. As a fellow reader and writer, model sharing your own reading choices and response writing. It’s okay to let your enthusiasm show in this, because once trusted to make their own reading choices and to present, defend, and rethink their own reactions to texts in a community of readers and writers, students naturally become enthused themselves.

Then, as a fellow reader and writer, you can even introduce them to selections from The Great Gatsby or Atlas Shrugged if you wish. Your students will be ready to decide for themselves whether they’d like to read more, what themes they discern, and just how valid those themes might be—or how much they as readers are being manipulated by someone else’s agenda.

—Les