Relaxing those Writing Muscles

In Bird by Bird, Lamott describes a situation in which a nurse told her to chew gum to help her sore throat after surgery. She states, “She explained that when we have a wound in our body, the nearby muscles cramp around it to protect it from any more violation and from infection, and that I would need to use these muscles if I wanted them to relax again” (p. 29). I thought this was an apt analogy to students who are resistant to writing. When kids have been told their writing is bad, or had a teacher who focused on grammar or only fixing mechanics, they withdraw to protect themselves. (Really this is true of any subject.) But you’ve got to get them to practice in a successful way to get them to relax and be able to become better writers. I have seen how this can work in my field experiences.

In my dyad, the students get to write whatever they want on Tuesday afternoons. Most are writing fiction stories. One boy was really resistant to start. When he did finally get going, the teacher let him publish a story that was shorter than was required because she wanted him to have success. He got a lot of great attention from being the first one in the class to publish his story and read it to the class. He read with expression and showed the pictures like a practiced read-aloud expert. During lunch in the teacher’s lounge, his teacher shared with past teachers about his success. After school one of them saw him and commented on his story. The teacher also sent a positive email home about this student’s story. All this focus on the positive to get him feeling successful and hopefully get his writing muscles going again!

In my main placement, the teacher bases her writer’s workshop on Regie Routman’s model in Writing Essentials. She follows the Optimal Model of Learning by modeling writing, doing shared writing with the kids, and moving them into their own guided and independent writing. Some of the students are below standard in writing, but she celebrates them where they are and, by doing so, gets them excited to write more. As they write more, they move forward. One student wrote three simple sentences in his first story and it took a lot to draw these out of him. But by finding one small thing to praise in that story, she made him feel successful. His next story was a little better. With guided practice, she got him to think about adding a little more detail. His third story was great (four pages with more details that put the reader right there) and he was beaming as he shared it with the class. This is the power of finding that one small nugget to praise in a child’s work.