Story #3: Prewriting

As a teacher who loves to write, or maybe a writer who loves to teach, or both, I spend a lot of time listening to kids talk about their writing. I also spend time talking to kids about their writing. I don't usually talk to kids about MY writing, but sometimes. Modeling is a good instructional strategy.

One moment that I knew my hard work was paying off was about two years ago, almost exactly this time of year. I was teaching Third Grade at the time and we were sharing together in one of our favorite parts of the week: Author's Chair. Ahh...Author's Chair was every Friday afternoon, and you could sign up as the week went on if you had something you wanted to read to the class but you didn't have to, and we had a special chair from IKEA that we only got out at this time of week so it was very special to sit in the actual Author's CHAIR. We had feedback forms that the audience could complete with two distinct columns and items to check off in each as a way of giving admiration and encouragement (and, to build our vocabulary along the way---oh, it took a lot of practice but by about mid-October I'd trained them all to say "I admired it when you..." or "I encourage you to try..."). Author's Chair was so fabulous. Sometimes there were even snacks.

So one rainy Friday afternoon in December it was time for Author's Chair and I got out the sign-up sheet and people took turns bringing their work to the front and sharing it with the class. There was admiration and encouragement and I think someone had brought in one of those *massive* packages of like a gallon of Goldfish crackers, cheddar flavor of course because--um, OBVIOUSLY--kids like cheddar flavor best.

Soon enough everyone was done with their turn in the Authors Chair and we'd even already packed up our backpacks and everything. I looked at the clock on the wall: fifteen more minutes of school? Dreading the amount of transitional energy it would take to move everyone into a game of Heads Up, Seven Up (or as we played it, Heads Up Ten Up because Ms. Kotleba is a socialistic egalitarian maniac and with twenty kids in our class Ten Up meant everyone got to be either a picker, or picked) so I decided to read to the class from my own writer's notebook.

I got up from my desk and walked to the Author's Chair, notebook in hand. I read my piece, a story about life with my brother when we were both growing up. The story had boogers and biting and kids being sent to their room as some of the key elements, so I thought for sure my kids would be into it. But, hmm, no. I was wrong. The people I called on for the "admiration" part of the feedback said totally vanilla things, like "I admire the way you used different voices for different characters when you read your story." Okay, fair enough and thank you for the compliment but what do you ENCOURAGE me to improve upon? Finally one of my students raised his hand.

"YES! Go ahead! What is it? What kind of encouragement would you like to offer me that you think would help to improve my writing?!" I was desperate for someone to say something, not only for the indication that would provide that they have some form of literary aspirations themselves, but as proof of the fact that I had actually taught them a variety of text analysis skills. Or even really that they had been paying attention at all.

"Um, Ms. Kotleba, no offense--but, did you use the Prewriting step of the Writing Process when you wrote this piece? Because it's funny but kind of hard to keep up with since it has no REAL plot. It doesn't seem very organized. You could use a web or some other graphic organizer from the packet we have in our yellow writing folders to plan out your next story before you write it. That might go better. I could show you how if you want next time we have Writer's Workshop."

...

And so it is with the different stories I write here on this blog. In case you were not able to tell, I do not always Prewrite before posting. Things can get long or kind of hard to follow. If you want to sit down with me sometime and share with me your favorite graphic organizer, that would be awesome. I am sure I still have a lot to learn about being a writer. And that, perhaps more than anything, is the reason I like to "teach" kids how to write--so they can actually teach me.