"Why do writers write?" This is a question that I ask my students at the beginning of every school year. We create an anchor chart that is displayed in the classroom for the year with all of their answers on it. Some ideas they may suggest are to get their thoughts and feelings out, because they are bored, or even because their teacher says they have to. The question that I really should be asking is "why do you want to write?" Some may even answer, "Well, I don't want to write, but I have to."
Reading, writing, and math are the core subjects that help students learn cross curricular lessons every day. Writing is the tool the students absorb to let them explain themselves and become individuals in the classroom and eventually in the real world. As I sit here right now and write this paper, I think back to how I got to this place. Where and when did I learn to form sentences and know which punctuation is right? How am I able to create an essay that makes sense and to give the details that I am trying to get across to my audience?
We teach writing every day, but many of us do not understand the depth of what tools we are actually giving to our students. Our students need to be able to write, and they need their writing to have a purpose. By teaching them writing every day, we prepare our students for their future education and careers after school. It would seem that not everyone realizes that writing is basic to thinking about and learning knowledge in all fields as well as to communicating that knowledge.
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Teaching our students to form complete sentences with the correct punctuation and capitalization are key mini lessons in any writer's workshop, but we need to be giving them more during this time. In Toby Fulwiler's article "Why We Teach Writing in the First Place
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he quotes Donald Graves saying, "Writing is the basic stuff in education. It has been sorely neglected in our schools. We have substituted the passive reception of information for the active expression of facts, ideas, and feelings. We now need to right the balance between sending and receiving. We need to let them write."
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When we let the students write, they need to be writing about something. They need an idea or an experience to draw from. At times we ask students to make up their own stories and ideas, but before we can expect this from the students, we need to let them write from a place where they are comfortable. What do our students know about? What makes them excited? If they can write about the ideas and topics that make them excited or they have a connection to, teachers can expect much higher quality work from them because they feel a connection to these topics.
It is my belief that if we give the students something to draw these ideas and thoughts from, they will be able to be more connected to their work. Photographs would be a great way for the students to come up with ideas. First teaching them how to create a story from a photo they do not know at all and adding their own details and making up a story will help them to be creative. Then when we go a step further to ask the students to share their own photographs. The connections and ideas from those photos can be written even more in depth because they know and connect to that the picture is. They or something/someone they know will be the subject of the photograph and they will be fully invested in the writing.
Pictures are what hold our memories forever. From the first photograph when a child is born until the memory board of photos at a funeral, pictures tell the stories of our lives and help us relive the memories we might forget. Wendy Ewald, an American photographer and educator, says, "Photography is perhaps the most democratic visual art of our time. For most of us, picture taking is part of our family lives."
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With the boom in technology in the last decade, it is even easier for everyone to snap a picture of something whenever one needs to. The students will be able to easily collect photographs to connect their writing to. Most people are carrying cameras around with them everyday inside their cell phones. When we look back at the photos that we take, we are brought to a memory of a moment in time. Whether the memory is positive or negative, the person looking at the photo can usually describe the feelings and emotions that go along with it.
