I love teaching my students to write because there is no greater pleasure in my life than expressing myself. Over the years, as politicians and other folks push standardized testing, students resent the more formal writing and complain, refuse to participate or do a lousy job to prove how much they hate writing.
Today, I explained to my students that we were going to venture into writing about ourselves – about things that matter to us. Guess what? Not one complained – not one. We pulled up Inspiration (a software that helps with planning) and students worked through the parts of the document that they needed to include in the writing in order to create a document that they can display with pride. This writing will be a slow process because students will need to conference constantly with teachers and students; learn new evaluation techniques to help them make decisions about their writing style. It was wonderful day working with my students because they have already demonstrated their total interest in writing about themselves. Little do they know that there is more ahead.