Help! My Students Can't Write!

You tried to read their writing, value their voice, praise their efforts, and smile at their ideas. If only you could read their writing. The piece is a mess. Their handwriting isn't legible. You can't figure out where a sentence ends or begins. The spelling is atrocious. And this is the year of the state writing test.

What is that old saying about building on a foundation of sand? Yeah, that one. It's time to pour a little concrete. You need to back it up and start again. Kids cannot learn craft if they haven't learned how to write a sentence. Telling kids to "just write", to get something down on paper is like telling a ballet dancer to "just dance" or a musician to "just play". Dancers need to learn the steps and techniques -the basics first. Musicians must learn to read music and play the keys before they can write a symphony. Writers must master the foundation of sentence structure and the conventions of writing before they can learn to craft a piece like a word artist.

In recent years conventions have gone out the window. Yes, we want to value what kids have to say, but they need to learn to say it so that we can hear it. Writing is about communicating. As much as we'd like all of our children to grow up to be authors -it's not going to happen. Our students will need to write to communicate -an email, a report, a memo. Writing to communicate doesn't require craft. Craft is for fiction writers and creative nonfiction writers who are word artists. If we are lucky, we will get to spend a year with a future author, but chances are, most of our students will only write out of necessity.

In order to tear down and rebuild you need to pull your struggling writers into small groups. Interactive modeling is the key. You are playing a game of Pete, Repeat. Together you work on one sentence at a time for one paragraph. You write. They copy. You explain. They listen. You write together. They write alone. Write paragraphs about things they know. Don't try to force creative ideas. They can't find their voice if they can't find the end of a sentence. Do this over and over again until your students can write a solid paragraph on their own. Solid means focused, complete sentences, and correct conventions. Don't worry about similes and metaphors and lovely word choice. Keep it simple for now. Once your students master a paragraph they can try crafting techniques.

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