Inside Out Strategies for Teaching Writing Chapter 3

The Classroom Environment

This chapter in the book as the title indicates is how to design your classroom environment. It doesn’t provide a map on how your furniture should be arranged, but it does provide a general guideline on things that you should find in a writing classroom.

According to the author’s the most important piece to any good writing class is student work because it builds pride, enthusiasm, and enhances motivation. Here are several types of work you can display:

· Finished work

· Drafts of unfinished pieces

· Quotable quotes from student journals

· Pictures of your students writing

· Pictures and author bios next to their writing

The authors’ mention that music is essential in a writing class because music makes us feel better—it is used as background for workdays.

Apart from looks and sounds the rest of the chapter focuses on creating a feel for your classroom. The main part of any writing class is it must feel safe if you want to students to experiment or take responsible risks in their writing. The following are some activities that you might want to use to help facilitate a safe and open writing environment.

· Beginning activities include:

o A 10 minute free write about how students feel about writing; teachers can use this to help alleviate some of the frustrations and fears students have about writing.

o Name activity: where students must repeat each name that was said before their own in order to help build community.

· Invitations for peer dialogue

o Interview a partner and write a poem or introduce them to the class.

o Lying game—where students make up a like or truth statement. Classmates must decipher if it is true or false.

· Visual portraits

o Coat of arms: create symbols that represent them

o Secret box: create collage on a box that represents them; place three artifacts/secrets about them; they share as much as they want with a partner.

· Beyond the class:

o Walking compositions: encourage students to get out of the class and take notes on a particular place on campus, noting sights, sounds, smells, etc. and create a descriptive piece about that place.

I thought this chapter was an eye opening read. For many of the activities the authors’ discussed to help facilitate a safe community of writers, I often felt were a waste of time because there were more important curricular content that needed to be addressed and taken the time for in the period. For instance the name game--in hind sight the idea of the name game that once seemed so absurd, now makes sense. I was so frustrated with my students when they couldn’t identify the name of some of their classmates half way or even at the end of the year. The name or even the lying game now seems like a simple fun way for students to get to know one another, instead of being strangers in the same class. I have to get through my head that fun activities make learning more enjoyable and I need to incorporate these types of activities more.

Another topic that sticks out for me is the idea of putting up student work. I can see how it builds a sense of pride and motivation and those feelings are important in facilitating a good writing environment. I always start to put up student work, but once second quarter comes along I stop because I have too many other things to do. I have to figure out a way where I have students in charge of putting up the student work. Does anyone have any suggestions?