Are too many kids needing help during writing time?

How does a teacher avoid the trap of too many kids needing help during writing time?

When too many students need help, learning time becomes waiting time, which is wasted time. It’s also stressful for the teacher, because as we all know, bored kids can come up with annoying ideas for how to spend that waiting time.

What does this look like in your classroom? Maybe this scenario is familiar:

 A teacher decides to have her first grade students write about a pet they would like to have. Her rubric for success is four sentences and a picture. She has given very clear directions and modeled exactly how to do this. She sends everyone to their seats to get to work, and immediately hands go up. “I don’t know how to spell this word.”  “How do I draw a pony?”  “Is this enough writing?” or the famous “I’m done.” when the student has put in very little effort.

Now she is rushing around trying to problem-solve, help with spelling, and encourage, cajole, and tutor.

When too many people are saying “Help!” (whether they are first graders learning to write or senior citizens learning to use a computer) it means only one thing. What you’re asking is too hard for them to do independently. Are the students lazy or uncooperative? No, they’re just overwhelmed. Often we think that students are more capable than they actually are. The only real solution then, is to make the activity easier!

In this case of the pet stories, the teacher could supply basic sentence examples with a fill-in-the-blank area for the animal name. (i.e. I would like to have a ________ for a pet.) She could supply picture cards with animal names. She could have step-by-step drawing pages available for various animals. Maybe she can get a few parent volunteers or older kids in the school to scribe for children who don’t have the skills to write their own words yet.

That said, there is an underlying problem here, which is that many teachers see writing activities as writing instruction.

We all enjoy doing fun writing activities with kids, but it isn’t the best way to teach writing to kids. The real, long-term solution to the problem of too many kids needing help is better teaching.

In order to become truly independent writers who need less and less help, children need targeted instruction in the skills that will give them confidence. By the end of first grade, most students who have had good instruction will be able to do activities like the pet story without needing the extra support I suggested. But if writing “activities” are the only instruction they are given, then progress may be very slow for many students.

Skill-based instruction in teaching kids to read and write, sometimes called “structured literacy”, is necessary for most young children, according to decades of research on how we learn to read (now often referred to as the Science of Reading).

Mastering specific language skills such as phonemic awareness, learning letter sounds, blending sounds into words, and spelling, lead to success in the “activity” of reading and comprehension. In the same way, mastering writing skills such as handwriting, simple drawing, and creating sentences, lead to success in writing activities.

Here’s a little more about structured literacy and why it’s necessary.

And here’s a related blog post that will inform and entertain you further!

 Why the science of teaching writing doesn’t include telling kids “Do your best”