“The object of teaching a child is to enable him to get along without a teacher.”  ― Elbert Hubbard

During my long practicum I introduced Write Traits as a way to help my students become stronger story writers. At first all I heard was “this is too hard,” or “I don’t know how to do this,” or even ” I can’t think of anything”. From all this negativity I saw that my students lacked confidence. They had it ingrained, at the age of seven, that mistakes were bad, or that there was a right or wrong to all aspects of school.

This bothered me because I didn’t expect my students writing to be perfect, but I did expect them to try and do their best. I wanted my students to take risks and the only way I knew how to do this was to create a safe, welcoming learning environment for my students that was free from judgement and negative criticism. In order to shift their thinking, as a class we had many discussions about what my expectations were of them and that it was okay to make mistakes. Soon enough these excuses weren’t heard as often.

Once my students recognized that writing time was a time where they could write and/or draw about anything they wanted to, and express their feelings, emotions, thoughts, etc., writing time turned into the quietest time of the day. My students were engaged in their writing. For some it was soothing and they didn’t want to stop. For others it was a challenge to write the most.

Story writing in my classroom was successful because each student worked at his or her own pace, I had different expectations for each student and each of them tried to go beyond that expectation.

Check out the blog posts for pictures and templates from my Story Writing unit.