Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Edutopia: Have Students Sketch to Kill the Prewriting Jitters
I can't say enough about WRITING. This is a huge weakness for my students and for myself. Being a special education teacher, most of my students are reading below grade level and therefore their writing abilities mimic their reading scores. This article written by Todd Finley discusses a pre-writing strategy teachers can do to help struggling writers overcome "what" to write about. The article suggest having students sketch out a picture to help with the "blank-page-syndrome." I have used this strategy before in my classroom and for some it was a great tool to help them focus on a specific topic or a starting point. Some helpful hints noted in the article were: model an example first and to ask questions about the students pictures to get them ready to write.
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I have also used this strategy in the classroom and it was so helpful for a majority of my students. I also found that sometimes they were so proud of their picture, they wanted to ensure their story was as equally as impressive. It is so difficult to spark intrinsic motivation for writing with special education students but this strategy would sometimes create it!
ReplyDeleteThanks Brooke, I think the intrinsic motivation piece for these student is blocked with failure. The lack of success at this very task is enough to keep them from trying. They have failed miserably and until they have success with writing, they have no motivation.
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