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Hey! I Can Do That
Helping Students Become Writers
Nina Parish
Riley, my 2 1/2-year-old niece, has been speaking in sentences and mimicking adults' speech for quite some time now. She has learned that language is the means to get what she wants and to communicate her feelings to others. When I was with her and my family a week ago, she demonstrated a new power she had developed over her language. She took centre stage and proceeded to talk in nonsense words and syllables. She manipulated her language so that, although it sounded like English, it wasn't. Riley looked at all of us with a knowing smirk of pride and accomplishment on her face when she realised that she had fooled us all into listening more closely to try and decipher what she was saying. Although she had mastered the power of language for communication quite a while ago, she now realised that she had also learned the power to manipulate language for fun. To help my students develop this feeling of power to manipulate language for different ends both orally and in writing is one of the goals I have always had as a teacher.
My ability to help students to develop this power was enhanced when I attended workshops given by Lucy Calkins and Shelly Harwayne, read their books, and became an advocate of the Writer's Workshop. As the Language Arts Department Head at Canton Middle School in Baltimore, MD, I was able to experiment in implementing a daily Workshop hour with my own class and to allow other teachers to come and observe. As a result, our department developed a schedule for the next year that gave us a double period of 110 minutes so that we could teach literature and more formal writing in one period and use the other period for the Writer's Workshop. Eventually over a few years, we wrote our own curriculum in the summer, which tied the Workshop activities to the novels we were reading in the literature period. The students became more and more aware of themselves as writers and took pride in their writings and projects. In this article I will describe three of the activities, modelled by Lucy Calkins in her book, Living Between the Lines. I will describe how I implemented these activities in my classroom in Baltimore that first year, and I will try to imagine how I would have altered these activities had I used them with my Afghan students when I worked at an orphanage in Kabul while in the Peace Corps in the mid-sixties.
The very first activity I engaged in with my students was the use of a memory object as a spur to reminiscing and journal writing. Students were asked to bring in small objects which sparked a memory for them. They would show the object to the class and tell their memory. The class could ask questions to help the teller elaborate on the memory. We shared about three or four memory objects a day. After the sharing, students were paired off and instructed to tell a memory to their partner. They would then write the memory in their journal. I always participated with the class and told and wrote my memories too. During the last ten minutes of the class, volunteers would sit in the "writer's chair" and read their journal entries. The class, again, would comment or ask questions that would lead to additional elaboration.
The telling of the memories first is an important pre-writing phase of the writing process. The students become comfortable with writing if they have this opportunity to rehearse their stories orally before writing. All of this initial partnering and sharing also helps to build the trust between class members so that during later sessions they seek out, rather than resist, the criticising of their work by each other.
The journal of memories becomes a treasure chest of ideas for the students to use in later writings. For example, Brandi G. brought in a seashell from a trip to the seaside. She shared and wrote about the times she spent there with her family during the summer. Later on when we wrote poetry, she used these memories as a springboard to writing the following poem:
Seashells
Seashells, seashells
Wherever I go.
How many I have,
I do not know.
Big ones, small ones,
Short ones, tall ones
In all different sizes.
Some are as round as a circle.
The colours are almost purple.
Some are pointy like triangles.
They have the same right angles.
I collect them under the sun.
I remember when I had none.
Collecting seashells is fun.
Sherwan B. also had a collection, but of basketball cards. She shared them with us and wrote a memory. Her poem is:
Basketball cards
I used to collect basketball cards a long time ago.
I used to read some every day
Some fast and some slow.
My basketball cards were like a secret to me
Because the cards I never let anyone see.
Basketball cards were like a diary
Kept beside my heart.
Nicole D. brought in a picture of her sister and shared how her sister always crawled into bed with her when she was young. Her poem expresses this memory.
My sister
Many nights she would wander
Right into bed with me
As my hand lay on her chest
I could feel her heart
Strongly throbbing
Like it was going to burst
Right out of her chest at me
But the beats had a rhythm
Like the beating of drums
That soothed me to sleep
Like an African lullaby
As you can see, these students were beginning to develop a power to manipulate their language to express their feelings. Notice how Brandi works hard to keep her lines rhyming and still to maintain the description of the seashells. Many younger students throw out the meaning when they work at rhyming. Notice how Sherwan manipulates the word order in her fifth line, "Because the cards I never let anyone see." She does this to maintain her rhyme, but she also does it to make this line more powerful. The change in word order emphasises the line and the special secret that the cards were to Sherwan. Notice how Nicole focuses her image on the heartbeats of her sister and is able to create an irony between the frightening throbbing and the soothing lullaby. These students, by the time they wrote these poems, had engaged in many hours of writing, peer sharing, and critiquing which helped to develop this mastery. They obviously are secure in their roles as writers.
In thinking how this memory object technique would have worked with my Afghan students, I realised that I probably would have separated the groups by gender. The boys might have shared more sensitivity without the girls, and the girls would have been freer to express some of their strengths without the boys. One of my high school boys, Mohammed, one day invited me to his village outside of Kabul. To get there I had to leave the paved road and walk over rocky ground until we came to the high walled compound. Inside, his aunts went unveiled and showed me their braided hair. I met Mohammed's young, beautiful fiancee, and was treated with love, respect, and cordiality. Mohammed might have shown a small stone from his village and might have told us about the warmth and love that he felt growing up amongst his kind relatives. His poem would, of course, have been a longing for his love and village, as was the subject of many Afghan songs and poems.
One of my girls, Gul Warou, had recently been given a glass eye by an aid organisation. She had lost her eye in an accident as a young child. She might have shared the patch she once wore and told of how it felt to always be seen as different. Her poem might have expressed her longings to become a "modern" woman and perhaps might have used a metaphor comparing the wearing of the patch to the wearing of the burka. Both the patch and the burka cause society to view her as less than competent and equal.
I do think my students would have been eager to share their memories and to begin to express themselves more freely in writing. They had a great sense of humour so I'm sure there would have been many funny stories and poems, too.
Since I've jumped so much into the poetry, let me tell you how I led my students to this writing. Before we wrote any poems, the class tried to brainstorm a definition of a poem. They were sure that poems were writings that consisted of rhyme and rhythm.
That was about as far as they could go in defining a poem. The next day, I collected all of the poetry anthologies from our school library, put them on a cart, and wheeled them into my classroom. I asked the students to choose a person they felt comfortable working with and then to come up to the cart and take a few books that looked interesting. Next, I instructed the students to each pick out a poem that they thought they would like, read it silently, and then read it aloud to their partner. They should each take turns reading the poems to each other several times. After fifteen or twenty minutes, I asked them as partners to write down anything they noticed about the poem that would give them another characteristic of poetry to add to our definition. Of course, by the end of this period, rhyme became an option rather than a necessity as many of them had read examples of free verse. We repeated this exercise for a week. By the end of the week, the class was able to articulate that a poem (lyric) is the crystallisation of a single, deep thought or feeling. Some of the techniques of language that a poet uses are rhyme, rhythm, figurative language, repetition, and the change in word order. This was now a starting point for my students to begin to think about the writing of poetry.
A writing teacher cannot ignore the reading/writing connection because all good literature forms the conscious or unconscious models of our writing. I tried to make these models more conscious in my students' minds as they began to write their own poems. I wanted them to feel that they knew how good poets manipulated the language in order to express themselves as powerfully as they could.
The students used their journals as jump-ing-off points. The journals gave them ideas for writing, but the reading and discussions of poetry gave them the knowledge of techniques to use in their writing. The students again worked with a partner for sharing and critiquing. I always allowed any student who needed help; or had a question concerning what he wrote or was stuck, or who just wanted to share something she had just written; to go up to the "writer's chair" and talk to the class. The students always took each other very seriously at these times and offered valuable suggestions. When all students had completed at least one poem, which they deemed worthy of publication, we bound them into a class anthology. Each student was given a copy and we placed several in the library.
When you plan activities that help the students to overcome the two fears of "I don't know what to write about," and "I don't know how to write that," you will be amazed at the works they produce. Here is another product from this activity:
Tears, by Nicole J.
tears tears
falling down
why did alice nearly drown
tears are seen
when sad things happen
like when you're held up by a weapon
do they only come when you're sad or mad
are tears also happy
tears are emotional drops
that expose what a person is feeling inside
are tears poison
are they magic
are they a cleansing for life
why does a person cry
why do tears just drop by
tears tears
falling down
why do people weep and frown
Tears, by John B.
Tears.
What are tears?
Are they raindrops
Or sadness falling?
They fall slowly like leaves.
They rush swiftly down like a bungee jumper.
What are tears?
I'd like to share one more poem with you because Jerry P., who was very special to me, wrote it. He came to me diagnosed with dys-graphia, which is the inability to transfer thoughts into writing. Jerry had to dictate everything, but the class always made him feel like a writer, too. Jerry brought this poem to me on a scrap of paper and it was almost indecipherable. I asked him to read it to me, and this is what he read:
Six years of anguish
Six years tomorrow I made a mistake
I became a statistic
I killed a boy over a hat
I thought I'd never get caught
The pain is like a devil's dagger in my skull
Twisting, twisting
Often at night I wonder
Was it really worth it
Is a hat a fair trade for two lives
His is gone
Mine is wasted
I can neither vote nor get a job
This is bad
Tonight it all ends
All my misery
It's now eleven
The noose is around my neck
Dear God, forgive me
SNAP
Surely there should be a place for this kind of written expression in classrooms. This is the kind of writing that gives us chills and speaks to us on the deepest level. Students should be empowered to write like this.
Of course, in my class we read and wrote lyric poetry modelled on British and American literary traditions. The models will vary and be dependent on the literary traditions of a country and its culture. In Islamic cultures, for example, poetry is valued as one of the highest art forms. Poetry is quite formalised and often the skill of the poet is based on how he/she is able to create a unique variation within the stylised forms. With my Afghan students, then, I might have focused on only one aspect of a good poem, e.g. the creation of fresh and controlled metaphors, for these are found in all prized Islamic verse. These metaphors, though, would also spring from the wells of their stored memories.
The final activity I will describe is the creation of picture books. This was always the culminating activity of my Writer's Workshop classes. Again, I could not ignore the reading/writing connection. In preparation for this activity, I spent weeks scouring used bookstores and used book sales. I especially liked the last day of a sale when you could buy a grocery bag of books for a couple of dollars. I also asked the students to bring in any old ones that they could donate to the class. By the time we were ready to begin, I had a big box full of picture books.
We repeated what we did with poetry. Students selected books to read with a partner and to list the characteristics of a picture book that they could glean from the books they had chosen. By the end of the week, we had a long list of details ranging from the fact that the pictures carried and related the story as much as the words. There were few words on a page and they were generally along the bottom of the page. If a story was being told, it had to move swiftly and have no subplots. As with all good stories, it had to have a beginning, middle, and end, a conflict and resolution, well-defined characters and a distinct setting. Often there was a moral, theme, or teaching aspect to the story. Students had now been immersed in picture books, had defined their characteristics, and were ready to brainstorm, rehearse, and write. They used their journals, ideas from other classes, their own and their siblings' experiences to develop the story. They told them to each other, plotted out the text, and then thought about the pictures they would add to enhance their text. Once they had a complete plan and an edited text, they wrote and illustrated their pages on white paper. The final stage was illustrating and titling their book on construction paper, punching two holes on the side of each page and tying the book together with yarn. The culmination of this activity was a visit to a day-care centre where students shared their picture books with the children.
Would this activity have worked with the Afghan children? Oh, I am positive that
they would have leaped into the activity with glee because they loved and cared for the smaller children. I cannot recall seeing any picture books there. However, I do remember their first primer, for I used this to tutor the first graders in reading. This primer was similar to a picture book, but it did not contain a sustained narrative. I do think I could have used it, though, as an example and explained how the book would require a story of some kind. Perhaps we would have brainstormed a story together first and then discussed and drawn the illustrations which would help to carry the story along. I know my students would have then gone on to write stories of their villages and the life they missed. Gul Warou might have written an illustrated book of what it was like to be in high school, since she was one of two girls I had helped to become the first girls from the orphanage to attend high school. She might have written a manual for the girls who would follow so that it would not be as frightening an experience as it had been for her initially.
Here, then, are three activities that will help students anywhere to discover their power over language as a tool that can be manipulated and controlled to communicate their thoughts and feelings to a reader. Once students begin to feel this power, they will be able to transfer this skill to all of their academic writing as well. Writing will become not a chore but a tool they can skilfully wield no matter what the assignment.
Reference
Calkins, Lucy McCormick, Harwayne, & Shelley (1992). Living between the lines. Portsmouth, NH: Heineman/Boynton/Cook.
Nina Parish began her teaching career in Afghanistan where she worked for almost four years with the U.S. Peace Corps. She recently retired after 26 years as Language Arts Department Head at a large middle school (grades 6-9) in Baltimore, Maryland.
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Hey! I Can Do That! Helping Students Become Writers (Nina Parish)