Living Life Twice

  Fellow teachers of writing please allow me to allay your concerns about the state of sentence structure among young writers. Help is at hand.  It can be improved by using a range of simple, yet effective strategies. Many of the same techniques used to teach fluency in reading can be used in writing. We need to highlight to students the importance and power of fluency. By exposing them to writing samples that flow easily, they will be more able to recognise good sentence structure and apply this skill to their own writing. By working with students and sharing exemplary literature samples we can highlight such important features as sentence beginnings, sentence length, sentence combining, and run on sentences. Sentence Beginnings: Sample Student Writing 1 I have a bike. It is red. I like to ride it. It is fun. My friend and I like to ride in the forest. It is really cool there. We have a good time. When it is time to go home I have to put my bike in the garage. That is where I...

 Teaching   Writing Under The Influence As teachers of writing we frequently gravitate to the words of authors we admire. We then take their observations about the writing process and apply them to our own writing situations. However, when we find ourselves reading published works- novels, picture books, news articles, or poems, the process that has delivered remains largely hidden. We may find ourselves speculating about what action has taken place in order for these profound words to appear before our eyes. We may even begin to search for answers. It is important to empower ourselves in order to be able to empower our student writers.  Our own understandings must grow in order to develop strategies we can teach our students. This offers an exciting prospect for our teaching. When we operate in this space, our teaching is full of possibility. The writing actions of authors we hold in high regard begin to inform our teaching.  We start to consider the impact a partic...