Living Life Twice

 'Agency is about having control over your choice of writing topic and ownership over how you go about writing it. Agency helps create a culture of writers with self determination.' Ross young and Felicity Ferguson 'Real World Writers-A handbook For Teaching Writing With 7-11Year Olds' Across the years I have worked with many teachers who constantly strived to provide young writers in their care with a genuine sense of agency. They worked respectfully to develop a classroom culture where every writer was encouraged and supported to make informed decisions regarding writing projects they wished to pursue. Many of these teachers were operating from this position before the term -agency, ever came into vogue. Agency produces great results. Its presence leads to the  successful production of meaningful writing pieces. Writers with a strong sense of agency frequently exceed expectations, improve their academic outcomes and exhibit increased engagement and motivation for writ...

  Promoting Student Ownership Of Writing Ideas  -Without Choice, You Won’t Get Voice   Upon discovering some young writers have endured a regular diet of teacher selected topics and genres, sentence starters, and story leads stretching across their short writing lives, it is hardly a surprise to hear they subsequently exhibit difficulty and anxiety when asked to self-select writing topics. It is little wonder they suffer a crisis of confidence when asked to rely on their own thinking and ideas.  They perceive the request as daunting because their independent thinking capabilities have been stifled and undernourished.  They have been denied important opportunities to develop motivation and initiative as writers. They remain inexperienced in the art of decision making and the critical thinking that surrounding choice and voice. Cognition will not take place where the young writer perceives the notion of topics resides solely with the teacher. They remain unawa...

Everytime we enter the classroom it is incumbent on each of us to bring all that we have garnered about reading and writing and mindfully apply this invaluable knowledge to our teaching of writing. We are never alone in our teaching if we apply this thinking. Ask yourself- what have I seen other writers doing that might assist the writer's I'm teaching? As teachers of writing we need to gather around us lots of authors we trust and respect. Authors who are available to assist in the important task of developing the confidence and competence of young writers. When we allow these trusted authors to become our co teachers, it affords students the opportunity to more readily acquire the craft of writing. We are mindfully exposing the inexperienced writer to rich literary models. How good is that? We must take every opportunity to encourage students to investigate specific aspects surrounding the work of these mentors. In our daily teaching it is important to encourage the imitation...

The question arises- How do we best facilitate lifting the writing out and up in order for it to be shared with a broader audience? How can we as teachers of writing support inexperienced young writers to successfully move from collecting writer’s notebook entries to identifying their own writing projects .  Helping the inexperienced writer avoid becoming trapped in a whirlpool of copious notebook entries (that never grow and develop into something more fully developed) remains a critical consideration, for those of us responsible for teaching writing. The writer’s notebook is a tool for writing. It is not intended for the entries to become ensnared; trapped in a word prison. The notebook contains many beginnings and not all of them are destined to be launched beyond the notebook pages, but their presence affords the writer options. The skill lies in identifying and lifting out that piece, or pieces, the writer feels have the most potential for developing into something bey...

It always concerns me when student writers approach the task of writing, lacking any sense of freedom to explore and manipulate ideas. They commonly experience emotional blocks when it comes to making decisions. A distinct lack of confidence is evident. They ask questions of their teachers such as: How much should I write? Should I use paragraphs? What should I write about? Is it okay to write about...? The term 'independent writing' is an accepted phase within the writing workshop, but a closer examination reveals the writing taking place at this point is all too frequently, independent in name only. All too often young writers can be observed working on an assigned writing task and the questions they ask indicate they are a long way short of being independent and self directed. This scenario suggests  the whole notion of independent writing may require a significant rethink in such classrooms. -And yet, in other classrooms I gain a sense that the writers are ...

For the last two weeks I have been working with schools in Australia’s Northern Territory. I have had the pleasure of meeting enthusiastic young writers and their equally enthusiastic teachers.  From Darwin I have been able to visit schools close to the city such as Wagaman Primary School where I worked to 23 teachers from a collection of schools. Pre-briefing sessions were followed by classroom demonstrations and then debriefings. A day of rich writing conversations. Young writers and teachers examined my writer's notebooks and were encouraged to carry away as many ideas as their minds could carry. More scenes from Wagaman Primary School of young writers and teachers exploring notebooks. Writers share. When it comes to writer's notebooks in the classroom, teachers and kids need to reach an agreed understanding - the notebook requires regular feeding in order to remain healthy. The writer must collect a large quantity of material and it needs to be varied in natu...