Imagine your writers’ workshop, students sitting at their desks, pencils in hand, ready to write. Some begin immediately. Others can’t seem to get off the mark and spend a lot of time thinking… Some are done in five minutes, but resist revision. Many are off task and need redirection. Most are waiting for a conference with you. Does this sound familiar?

For years that is what my classroom looked like. Students were frustrated because they didn’t know what to write about or how to get started. But even more frustrating, I didn’t know exactly how to teach them to write. I knew what good writing looked like, but didn’t know how to get them to produce good writing – until I discovered the strategies from Empowering Writers. After attending the narrative workshop and using the lesson plans, those reluctant students bloomed into confident writers! For the first time I knew exactly what to do, how to teach writing, where to start, and had detailed lesson plans with clear objectives. Teaching writing became a pleasure – no longer such a daunting task.

What Transformation Looked Like

I think the most important step for creating success was the methodology. I really concentrated teaching writing in the manner addressed in the workshop. The skills are taught in isolation and build on each other in a way that really made sense to me and my students. We were constantly learning new techniques while reviewing the previous ones, so my students understood the organization and development of the stories they were creating.

The methodology stresses the importance of modeling. At first, I wasn’t comfortable getting up in front of the class, staring at a blank sheet of chart paper. However, because exemplars of powerful writing were provided for me in the Comprehensive Guide, I had much more confidence modeling, building and expanding on their ideas. As time went on, I had my own ideas and referred to the exemplars only occasionally. The more I modeled, articulating the thought processes of an author, asking productive questions, the more my students internalized and applied this to their writing.

Building Experience and Vocabulary

One of the challenges I faced teaching in a Title I school was the limited background knowledge of my students. Many never left the county for a trip or vacation. Vocabulary was very limited along with their life experiences. My modeling encouraged and empowered my students to pretend, imagine, and dream about places and characters outside of their firsthand personal experiences. The Guide also suggested scores of books to build background and context as a jumping off point for writing. After the modeling exercise, and being exposed to the literature, they had more information and ideas to draw from as they began to write their own segments.

Many of the ideas and strategies used in the classroom to enhance their writing centered on building vocabulary. I had charts pasted everywhere on the walls. Every time we read we’d look for vivid verbs, sentence starters, transitional words and phrases, feelings expressed in a unique way, and great describing phrases. After pointing these out to students, they started looking for them as they read independently. Their reading comprehension increased as well as their writing ability. They began to “read to write” and at that point I knew I had them!

Also important was our reference to the “Narrative Writing Diamond” – a graphic organizer which clearly shows the shape a narrative story takes. Analyzing the diamond constantly through literature taught them a sense of story development in a way I had never been able to do before. Honestly, I don’t think I completely understood this sense of story proportion and balance myself. I began to recognize the same characteristics of the diamond in the adult novels I would occasionally have time to read.

I would also incorporate some of the phrases and transitional words that were on the wall into their weekly spelling list. As we all know, studying the weekly spelling list can become a boring, useless chore. Incorporating the “writing words” gave purpose and meaning to this task and the students saw the benefit and usefulness of learning to spell words they were actually using. Students had writing notebooks in their desks and would write inspiring words they found while reading.

Adaptations for the Range of Learners in my Class

For some of my struggling students, I taped index cards on their desks where I’d write commonly misspelled words, sentence starters and transitional phrases for them to try. Some students have trouble transferring something off of a chart on the wall. These index cards seemed to work for them. As I moved around the room during the guided practice portion of the workshop, I could easily redirect them by pointing at the index card.

Sometimes these students had trouble stretching out the main event – the largest, most complicated, significant part of the story. I’d have them draw, frame by frame, what would be happening in their story. We’d take the pictures, and write about them using a balanced mix of action, description, thoughts and feelings and dialogue, adding transitional phrases to move through the event. Extending and expanding story action seems to be the hardest element of the main event. Every time we read a story of a bicycle race or chase scene, I’d make a list of the action phrases, post it on the wall and refer to it to help stretch out the main event. My students needed vocabulary all around them. Looking at their index cards, charts on the wall, and their notebooks filled them with the words and images to create successful stories.

Making Revision Fun!

I loved the “Before and After” revision exercises in the back of each of the sections of the Comprehensive Narrative Writing Guide. Each exercise featured a common writing weakness in a particular skill area. (For example, if the skill area was: “Entertaining Story Beginnings” the following weak beginning might be featured: One sunny day I got up and got dressed.)Since students had already had a lot of experience in writing entertaining, effective story beginnings, they recognized this common pitfall and knew specific techniques for use in revision. They also were less resistant to revision because the original piece didn’t belong to them! Their challenge was to revise the boring beginning with one of their own.

I’d copy these “Before and After” exercises and place them on a side table. As I circulated during the guided practice and noticed students who are doing quite well independently, I would have them go over, get a copy and work on the same skill as we were practicing. This allowed them to further explore and apply the same skill that was modeled without rushing ahead in their stories while I continued to help other students. These are great prescriptive lessons to use for homework or inclusion resource teachers.

Preparing Students to Respond to Prompts

Another successful technique found in the Prompt Section of the Guide involved analyzing the givens and variables of prompts. (givens, meaning the information students must include, variables meaning decisions they need to make as the author) I’d never really taught my students how to analyze prompts before, and what a difference it made! After learning about givens and variables, my students were able to read the prompt, decide what the significant story event would be, what to describe, and where to start. This skill really empowered them in approaching required assessments, both formal and informal. Such an important skill that I’d overlooked for years!

A Passion for Writing – and Empowering Tomorrow’s Authors

Empowering Writers changed my whole philosophy regarding teaching writing. Instead of hoping for a fire drill so I could put off the cumbersome, unmanageable writers’ workshop I used to struggle with, I actually enjoyed teaching my students how to write! The most rewarding part was witnessing reluctant, struggling students learning how to write and loving it!

When writing test scores in my title one school escalated to 91% proficient I knew I had to share this with other teachers. Educators were struggling too hard and many didn’t even realize these resources were available for them. I became an Empowering Writers presenter in 2002 and traveled all over North Carolina sharing the good news with other colleagues. I’ve witnessed frustrated teachers arrive at the workshop in the mornings, only to leave with a renewed spirit empowered with the knowledge and strategies that will really work! How satisfying to know that now I am not only affecting the lives of my students, but that I am affecting the lives of thousands more through their newly empowered teachers!