Cultivating Confident, Eager Writers

Writing ought to be fun, but for many people, it is not. Typically, we most enjoy the things we do well and conversely, we tend to excel at the things we enjoy. Both history of success and pleasure while engaging in an activity lead to increased confidence in our ability to shine in a particular trade. The same is true for children of all ages. As teachers of young and developing writers, we have the power to create the successful and enjoyable writing experiences for our primary grade learners that will make them confident writers in the years to come. Below are ten ideas to get you started:

1. Complete the Sentence

Provide a sentence starter on the board, such as “This weekend, I ____.” or “A book I love is _____.” Use this as a quick morning exercise or a jump start to a longer writing assignment.

2. Silly Story Writing

Fill a jar with picture cards of a variety of illustrated ideas: animals, foods, plants, people, sports equipment, actions, etc. Draw three cards from the jar. Each student then gets to create a short story or paragraph incorporating all three of the ideas from the cards.

3. Lists

Children will love an opportunity to make lists that they can use in real life (outside of the classroom). Invite them to create a grocery list for their parents’ next shopping trip, or a list of new things they learned this week in school and want to share with their families. You may also use this as a lesson in writing that is based on observation, such as by having the class list all of the sounds they hear in three minutes.

4. Letter Writing

Here is another way to let school and home life overlap. Allow children to write a letter or make a card that they will actually give or send to somebody, such as a thank you, get well, or just thinking of you card. Knowing that the piece of writing they are producing will be sent to somebody special will likely motivate your young writers to complete their best work on this project.

5. Journaling 

Frequent journaling may involve written exercises like those listed above, or various other forms of free writing, or creative writing. Journals may be best left unedited by a teacher, and instead thought of as a safe place for pupils to take writing risks without the fear of failure. Periodically, or even daily, you may have your students self-edit their work for practice. Just try to resist the temptation to check them over their shoulder as they miss some of their own mistakes.

6. Periodically Create a Final Draft of One Journal Entry

As with letter writing, turning any piece of writing into a final product, perhaps to be displayed or sent home, motivates children to pay a bit of extra attention that they complete their very best work. This will also allow students to read over their work and decide for themselves (or with some teacher guidance) which piece of their own writing is the strongest.

7. Occasional Freedom of Writing Implement

Every once in a while, surprise your budding young writers with the opportunity to choose any writing implement in the classroom or in their desks to use for the duration of a given assignment. Many of them may suddenly be more eager than usual to get started, as they grab their favorite color marker or special glittery pen or over-sized pencil to complete the assignment.

8. Occasional Opportunities to Write on Unusual Surfaces (e.g. windows, sidewalk)

Another easy way to get a room full of excited kids is to announce that each of them will get to write their best sentence from the current assignment on a classroom window with glass-writing pens, or on the sidewalk outside with chalk. Spontaneous and out-of-the-ordinary activities like these (#7 and #8) put smiles, if nothing else, on young learners’ faces as they write.

9. Read Aloud Daily

Ideally, every student is reading and being read to on a regular, if not daily, basis at home. But regardless, you should still read to, and with, your class each day to fill their developing minds with new vocabulary, creative stories, and a variety of written genres. As written language becomes more and more familiar to their ears, writing will become more natural and less intimidating to them. This may mean you choose a novel to read aloud from for several minutes each day upon returning from lunch recess. Or you may decide to use this special read-aloud time as a reward for good class behavior. (A certain level of behavior earns a certain number of minutes of reading.) While the majority of your pupils will look forward to reading time, you might find that some are disinterested completely. If you come across that issue, check out this article for ways to work around that dilemma. 

10. Provide a Word Wall

Many young writers are afraid to attempt to spell challenging words. Providing a word wall in the classroom, which you can add to each week as pupils learn new spelling words, enables them to not get stuck in the middle of their sentences due to fear that they will spell something incorrectly. They know they can always look to the word wall as a reminder of how to spell some of those tricky sight words. Reference this article for more ideas on creating a word wall in your classroom!

I hope you will implement these and more of your own creative ideas in your classroom to inspire your little learners to enjoy writing now and for years to come!