Wow! It is hard for me to believe that I have made it all the way to the letter W for my Education A to Z blog series. Writing in the classroom is something that I always loved and encouraged my reluctant writers and readers to do, by putting a spin on it!
What can be done for those students who either dislike writing, have a learning disability that makes writing more than frustrating, or perhaps the student who can’t sit long enough to put paper to pencil and create a written work?
After teaching special education for almost ten years, I found some things out that worked for my students. When I first introduced specific writing assignments, no matter how I excited I was about them, I just never knew if the assignment would motivate my students to want to write, so I just jumped in and hoped for the best.
My favorite way to instill a love of writing in my students was to first, get them reading. Many times students get so excited by what we were reading, that they wanted to write about it. Granted, I didn’t have them writing like most teachers would, I had them throwing out their thoughts to me as I wrote them on the overhead. We then took these ideas and made poems, drew pictures and wrote captions under them, typed letters on the computer, whatever got them excited about what they read, I turned into a writing project.
Another wonderful writing project I did with my special education students, many who had a passion for drawing, was to implement a project that allowed for both. I did this yearly with my students and it always went over wonderfully.
I would first pick a song that I knew would put images in my student’s minds. One year it was “Imagine” by John Lennon, another year it was “Colors of the Wind” from the movie Pocahontas. I would play the song, have my students close their eyes and just think about what pictures were being played inside their heads as they listened. I played the song again, this time with the students writing down one word ideas of images the song produced for them.
After a day or two of just listening to the song, brainstorming and talking about what the song meant, I started the project. I had pre-typed verses from the song on slips of paper. The slips of paper were placed in a jar and each student took turns drawing a slip. We would pass the jar around until each student had the same number of verses in their hands, most often three.
Once they had their verses, they were allowed to look at the words. They would then be responsible for drawing pictures of what they saw in the verse. They would draw rough drafts of the pictures; then write the verse under the picture. I always had the song playing throughout this process. We would then make final drafts of each picture and each verse was written neatly in each student’s handwriting under the pictures that were associated with the verse. I then, turned these pages into a book. I had it laminated and bound and each student received his own copy to take home.
I will admit this; it was my favorite way to get my students writing. I loved hearing them share with our principal that they had written a book. I loved the looks on their faces when they got the finished product back and saw that they had written and illustrated a book, thanks to a song that provided the basis for it.
The great thing about this project is that teachers can do it with general education students and special education. You can vary it to different degrees of learning and age levels. It is pretty versatile. You can even do this at home with your own children!
Writing doesn’t have to be boring. The more fun it is the more students will want to engage in it.
