From Reluctant to Riveted: 3 Steps to Writing Engagement

 

Tip #1: Create low-stakes, skill-building activities

When I speak to teachers, both those at my own school site and those from local districts, I find that oftentimes, every writing assignment given to students gets graded.

Yikes.

To begin with, if you can grade every single writing assignment your students do, they aren’t writing enough. And number two, that’s a lot of pressure to put on both you and your kids. 

Let’s change that. 

Instead, I want your students to engage in frequent low-stakes writing activities that are NOT graded. 

By breaking this one grammar skill down into its individual skills, I’m now able to identify exactly where my students are getting hung up when writing compound sentences. More importantly, I’m able to create and practice each of these individual skills in mini-lessons, scoots, and fun, hands-on activities. 

I personally enjoy asking my students to work with peers to physically build compound sentences out of sentence strips and punctuation marks. It’s fun and easy to fix errors, plus collaborating and communicating with peers gets everyone actively engaged and thinking/talking about writing or grammar. 

From there, we begin to search our mentor texts for the writing skill in action. This gets the kids reading plus actively thinking about writing. Once we’re feeling confident that we understand the writing skill and can find it “in the wild”, it’s time to incorporate the skill into our own writing samples. Usually we start small by writing or editing sentences and single paragraphs before moving on to larger writing projects. 

The main goal here is to build writing skills, confidence, and stamina through short writing activities, such as Power Writing. Keep the time limit very short to start with, forcing the kids to write quickly. Always leave the kids wanting more time to write. 

Then, save time for students to share out. If I only have a couple of minutes to share, I allow students to share with a friend. If we have a longer time to fill, I allow students to share out to the whole class. 

No matter what, do not give immediate feedback, even if you clearly heard a fragment or saw a run-on. Instead, simply celebrate their writing growth. This honors their time, effort, and voice. 

In the meantime, as you note common writing errors being made, you can plan out a few writing or grammar mini-lessons to be delivered later in the week. Honestly, it’s a lot less stressful for everyone involved. 

Whether you’re focused on mastering grammar skills or more elusive skills such as show, don’t tell, by engaging in frequent, short daily writing activities that are not graded, your students will begin to take more risks with their writing. They’ll try out new techniques and stretch their skills, and isn’t that the goal? 

Play

Here are a few of my favorite engagement boosting, low-stakes writing “drills” from my TPT store:

• Craft Narrative Introductions and Conclusions for ELA SBAC CAASPP Test Prep
• Paragraph Puzzles: Organize Scrambled Sentences to Improve Paragraph Writing
• Comma Rules Hands-On Grammar Practice Activities for Grades 3-8: Activity Bundle
• Narrative Writing Time-Filler Warm-Ups: 50 Digital Creative Writing Bell Ringers

Tip #2: Engage the senses

As a romance writer, I often turn to Pinterest to find inspiration. I find oodles of images that can better help me visualize my characters, their clothing, and the setting. Anytime I sit down to write, I first take a moment to revisit my saved pins. 

But images alone aren’t enough to get me in the right headspace to write. I need music too. I probably spend way too long digging through iTunes and Pixabay music, curating the perfect playlist, but it works. Nothing can help me get – and stay – in the zone quite like the perfect song played on a constant loop. Sometimes I even light a specific scented candle or surround myself with objects that make sense for my storyline. 

These techniques work to boost writing engagement for our students, too. 

Think about it. It’s really hard to write about going to the beach or playing in the snow, if you’ve never experienced it. If you have no connection to it.

While we may not be physically or financially able to provide our students with all these life experiences prior to engaging in a writing piece, we can include external stimuli, such as images, to help them better visualize it. Plus, including music or sound effects help mask any other noises that might otherwise distract students. 

Here’s a quick example of this in action. A few years ago, my students were supposed to read a story about a character who goes whitewater rafting with their family. Now, I’ve never been rafting and neither had any of my students. 

We were all having a hard time understanding what was happening in the story, so I searched for images and a soundtrack or video of whitewater rapids. Then I borrowed from a teacher friend a set of pool noodles that had been cut into thirds to use as oars. 

This time, when we reread the story aloud, I had the kids sit atop their desks and act out the events in the story as they read. With the image behind us and the sounds of the rushing river, they all naturally had to read much louder. When the raft in the story got stuck, all the kids leaned to the left, then the right just like the characters did. And of course, I had to be a little extra and walked around spritzing water into the air as if we were really on a raft in the river. We had a great time and suddenly, the story made sense. 

When I said to sit down and write the story from a different character’s point of view, everyone knew exactly what to write. 

We used this same philosophy in our Writer’s Lab too, transforming our space into a beach with a blue tarp and cutout fish stapled to the wall. Kids brought in their beach towels and we filled a small pool with sand and shells. The “snowy mountain” corner of the room included an old Christmas tree sans lights with a snowy owl puppet perched on top. Pine scented air fresheners completed the scene. 

Even if you can’t engage all 5 senses at the same time, just engaging one or two will help hook your reluctant writers. Plus, the lesson is way more fun for everyone, especially if you pair it with  . . . 

My favorite writing engagement activities:

• Visual Story Starters Bundle: Creative Writing Photo Prompts Set to Music
• Writing Intervention: Activities to Help Reluctant Writers Crush Writer’s Block
• Grammar Warm-Ups: 50 Digital Grammar Bell Ringer Activities and Time-Fillers

Tip #3: Harness the magic of novelty

Worksheets are so boring, at least as far as your students are probably concerned. Some kids will rush to get done and move on to a preferred task, while others may linger, dragging their feet as the assignment stretches out far past the allotted time limit. 

But if you sprinkle in a bit of novelty (aka teacher magic), and capitalize on the element of surprise, suddenly even the most mundane task is transformed into something that excites. 

Creating a sense of wonder or excitement doesn’t really take all that much work either. Sure, you could go all out and do a full-on room transformation. (To be honest, my favorite room transformation was when we transformed the room into a hospital and diagnosed what ailed our writing pieces. Watching a kid perform CPR on their own writing piece was hilarious.) But if you don’t have that kind of time, money, or energy, (and who does these days?) you can get the same effect without all the work. 

How? 

Make it a team competition event. It’s amazing how hard students work when they know a prize is at stake. Any assignment can be turned into a competition if you simply add a countdown timer and a prize. My kids will work extra hard if they know they can score a new whiteboard marker. Even fixing fragments can be gamified when you add in an online wheel of fragments (via Wheel of Names). 

Want to learn how to gamify your grammar? Check out my FREE course: Gamify Your Grammar

Get your kids up and moving. Turn your task into a scoot, gallery walk, scavenger hunt, or relay race. Many of my grammar activities include a scoot that gets kids moving around the room to complete multiple task cards. I like to make this extra challenging by hiding my cards in unexpected locations like under desks or chairs or high up. The kids love searching and I love that they are doing a ton of grammar tasks that might otherwise be boring. 

Another way to get kids up and moving is to set up writing creation stations. Similar to the scoot, students move from station to station gathering and creating the building blocks for a narrative story. In station 1, they might need to create a character out of model magic or playdoh. In station 2, they draw a map of their setting on a file folder. In station 3, they might mine vivid words. 

Now, the longer you give kids at each station, the longer they will take. However . . . that doesn’t ensure they will produce quality work. Instead, keep the time limits short so that they have to work quickly to beat the timer. Maybe instead of creating their own story conflict, they roll a die that determines their conflict for them. Or they pick a sealed envelope with the conflict inside. 

Take your class outside. I love practicing parts of speech while out on the playground. The change of scenery always revives a listless class. Add in a little chalk to create a poem or turn a hopscotch game into a story map. 

Add costumes or props. Props always add a little spice to any lesson. Create grab bags with random items and vocab word cards. Each team selects a grab bag and develops a story to go with the items. Create masks or puppets to inspire script-writing. Or go really simple and let kids team up to create something out of pipe cleaners. Whatever they create must be used in the story or essay they then write.

Write for a real audience. Far too often, the teacher is the only audience our students ever write for. Why not have your students write a story or expository book to share with a former teacher and their students? Suddenly, the kids care about their writing because they know someone they care about will be reading it. You can also write persuasive essays to the principal, their parents, PTA, and custodian. The key is to follow through and actually give the writing pieces to those people. 

Don’t write on paper. Write paragraphs on index cards. Fold copy paper into a smooshbook, then jot down a short story outline. Create a popup book. Write a poem on a blank bookmark. Dictate your writing into the computer using speech to text, but don’t forget to say the punctuation marks! 

Let’s Recap . . .

If you want to boost student writing engagement this week . . .

1. Set aside time for low-stakes writing activities that get your students thinking, talking, and writing
2. Bring in music and photos to engage the senses
3. And do something novel and totally unexpected!

For more fun writing tips, join my email list, then swing by my TPT store to pick up your new favorite writing resources!