Don’t you love it when, as a teacher, you can make yourself obsolete?
That’s exactly what I intended to do in my first writing project of the year. In conjunction with The New York Times Coming of Age in 2023 contest, I wanted my students to write a scene about their lives where the reader learns what it’s like to be a high school student today.
I knew writing a scene would be a challenge— getting students to write a very “zoomed in” moment has always been tricky for me. That’s why this year, I asked them to do a “practice scene” in groups. I requested lots of copies of illustrated children’s books without any words (some titles I used were Stormy by Guojing, Chalk by Bill Thomson, and Pancakes for Breakfast by Tomie dePaola). Students chose one of the books and practiced writing a few of the pages of the action in a detailed scene of about 500 words. They got to “fill in the blanks” of the details that were missing— the characters’ names, their backstories, their personalities. The results were hilarious.
Once students were finished, I looked over these practice scenes with a critical eye. I was looking for moments in their writing where the scene was really brought to life through the details used. It was so heartwarming to see my students already using some of the same techniques employed by professional writers— making lists, using punctuation for effect, and a flood of questions, just to name a few. I opened up this Google Slideshow and collected an example of great writing from each group as I read through their scenes.
The next step of the unit was for them to write their own scenes about their own lives. (I also had them create an entry for the NYT contest linked above and called the project “Multimedia Memoir.”) When it was time to revise, I didn’t need to reinvent the wheel; I had plenty of examples of great writing techniques on the Google Slideshow I had created. So I had students look them over and select at least three they wanted to try in their drafts. They made their revisions and labeled each sentence they changed with which technique they used so I could clearly see the revision.
As I scrolled through their final drafts, I was really impressed with some of the sentences they wrote with this simple revision activity. And the best part? I didn’t have to work that hard to do it. My students already had the knowledge; I simply served as a vehicle to expose them to different ideas that may not have occurred to them while they drafted. Collecting the writing samples was also a good reminder of my students’ current writing skills, which is helping me with planning what mini lessons I need to include in the next unit.
Moving forward, I am continuing to look for opportunities where I can use inquiry to have my students learn from one another. In what ways do you use student samples to guide your instruction? I’d live to chat about your ideas @TimmermanPaige!
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