Writing as a Tool to Facilitate Student Learning

The annual Write to Learn Conference was held earlier this spring at Tan-Tar-A and featured a variety of experts in the field of literacy. While attending the Write to Learn Conference, which focuses on writing as a multi-faceted tool in the classroom, Kaci, Jackie and I attended a workshop with Kate Messner.

Messner skyped into the workshop, as she was then snowed in at home. Surprisingly, the workshop talked little about how to get kids to write or become better writers, and more on how to incorporate writing as a tool to facilitate learning all around. Students’ writing, Messner claimed, almost naturally improves with little teacher input as students manipulate their writing skills to suit the varied tasks presented them. First, Messner stressed that students should be reading regularly. Regular reading is the strongest correlative indicator of adult career-oriented success, regardless of the material read. Like other experts in this field, Messner recommends students spend the first ten minutes of each ELA class reading (and other classes, with suitably related material). This in class reading should be choice-based, although Messner suggests that teachers have a broad knowledge of age-appropriate titles to suggest and read with reluctant readers. The best way for a student to become a strong writer is to read more, she says. As with her suggestion for choice-based reading, Messner strongly encourages as much choice-based writing as possible, both when working in fiction and non-fiction units. Another conference attender asked Messner how to get her students to write about something besides basketball and crime- she felt it was bad for her students, who are all in a juvenile detention center, to focus on only these things. Messner pointed out that authors always write about what they know, and what they need to process. Students should be allowed to write about what they choose, even if they choose the same thing all year. Finally, Messner urges teachers to be well-qualified writers; and not just the ELA teachers. The last hour of her workshop taught us teachers new writing skills and techniques. She asked everyone, “When is the last time you wrote a story?” The answer, she says, should be roughly the same as the last time you wrote a book. We as teachers should be ongoing participants and investors in all aspects of the fields we teach, not just certain parts.