If you want your students to think like authors, then have them speak to authors by Sarah Dollah-Said
Being a literature and writing teacher for middle school students is hard enough when you are competing with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumbler (whatever other social media networks that have just become available in the last five minutes) and the latest video games. But while some students respond more to the Call of Duty than the latest Scholastic book order catalogue, we as teachers have to work much hard to get our students to think as readers and writers. My team teachers and I have always felt that it was important to send strong writers to the high schools, but this school year the pressure became more real with the PARCC assessment.
We had to get creative with how to present texts to students and also get them motivated to write. To say that all of our students were super excited about writing is a complete lie. When introducing argumentative writing, we worked hard to use non-fiction texts that were of high interest. Some students responded, but others were not as interested. We utilized peer reviews and even had students rewrite another student’s first draft as their final draft. We still didn’t get everyone on board. Would we ever?
As students were reading high interest young adult fiction novels, they were becoming more interested in the themes in novels than they had in other texts that we gave them. One day a student said, “I want to meet Dan Gemeinhart” (author of The Honest Truth). He got me thinking. I did some research on Gemeinhart and emailed him.
Being a middle school librarian himself, he was excited to do it! He did well with my students and spoke them about the characters in his book. He also talked to them about his next book that is coming out this summer. What was impressive was how he spoke about his writing process and the interest that it sparked in my students. There were a couple of students who started to take more pride and care into their writing because of what Dan told them about the amount of time the process took.
The next author we Skyped (I found her online and spoke to her through email) was Holly Goldberg Sloan, the author of Counting by 7’s. When we Skyped Holly, she was in bed writing. She told my students about how that was her favorite place to write. Being that we are in Chicago (she recognized that through my accent), she even showed us a view of California from her window. She is a screen writer along with a novelist, and my students learned about the process of that genre as well as narrative writing. Holly had a lot to say about character development. My students were obsessed with Jairo the cab driver in Counting by 7’s because they thought his randomness was amusing. She told them about the bits and pieces of her life and different encounters she had with different people that helped her build each character like Jairo, Denny, and Willow Chance. This made students think carefully about how to piece characters together in their narratives.
Students were starting to wonder how I got these amazing people to “visit” our classroom virtually to talk about writing. I told them that I researched and simply asked. Later, a student named “Ryan” went online and contacted writer Robin Talley the author of Lies We Tell Ourselves, a new novel published through Scholastic that his book club had been reading. He got a hold of her through her Twitter account and asked her to Skype into our classroom. He asked me to confirm that he was allowed to have her Skype in as his guest and I did. Robin talked to students about how she was pieced the different themes of her novel (historical fiction, civil rights piece) together through a history she knew through family members.
Taking these virtual field trips got my students more interested in reading novels, but also taught them about something I had a lot of difficulty teaching- process. Students just wanted to be done with their work and turn it in. These authors got students thinking about why the process is so important in creating quality work that people will want to read.
As a teacher, I used the Glam-tech our students love to hangout on after school hours as a tool to create powerful discourse. Being a blogger, I love social media! I value that “Ryan” figured out its advantages when he contacted Robin Talley and took ownership of his learning. “Ryan’s” journal entries after our meeting were much more powerful because he was really make a connection to who he was as an author.
As teachers and authors, we like communities- such as this blog to communicate about our craft. We do this ourselves, but we need to think about how to engage our students in this process. Having authors Skype into the classroom is one way to do it amongst many others which I can writer articles and articles on. Every teacher is an artist and has her way of crafting writing instruction. At the end of the day, it is important to think about the message you are sending to students when you work with them in a community, rather than teach at them.
Sarah is a language arts teacher on the northwest side of Chicago. She has over a decade of teaching experiences and has worked with students of all levels and abilities. Sarah has strong interests in differentiated instructional practices and integrating social justice themes across content areas.
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