Skylar Devos – Director of Content and Pedagogy
If you’re planning for a stretch of distance learning, it’s a good time to be thinking about independent writing.
For one thing, it’s got a major benefit identified right in the name: independent. For many of us, this next year is going to be an interesting mixture of traditional instruction, new technology, and radically altered plans. Creating a rhythm of work that students can build on and sustain with less direct guidance and step-by-step oversight will be a boon not only to the teacher but also to the student, who can carry on their work without constantly checking back in for instructions.
At the same time, independent does not mean alone: Open-ended writing work also offers students a chance to process their experiences and emotions in whatever style and format feels appropriate, and to receive feedback and validation from their teacher and peers. As with independent self-selected reading, independent writing offers a chance for genuine connection and identity formation, both of which become especially important in a distance-learning environment.
We’re not the only ones who think so: The Aspen Institute’s 2019 guide, Integrating Social, Emotional, and Academic Development encourages schools to establish “warm, positive, and welcoming” classroom communities, build authentic relationships, and foster student agency through choice and voice, and the present moment seems especially appropriate for “rich developmental experiences that provide meaningful opportunities for students to engage with others and the world around them, and to reflect on their experiences.” Student-led writing touches on each of these.
It’s not just about the social-emotional work, though: Decades of studies of student writing in schools have consistently shown that students simply don’t get enough opportunities to write extended compositions of any kind. We often quote Doug Fisher’s aphorism “If you can read everything your students write, you’re not assigning enough writing,” but we can also pull directly from those studies: In 2013, thirty years after his original examination of classroom writing, Arthur Applebee (now partnering with Judith Langer) found that while methods of teaching writing had changed, teachers “still did not assign much of it,” and the end result looked quite similar: The majority of writing that students do is “writing without composing” and the resulting text is “completely structured by the teacher or textbook.”
That said, nearly all of us want to do more writing with our students, and we want even our older high school students to develop their writing fluency and stamina. If we know it is good work worth doing, then, the remaining challenge is simply figuring out how best to implement it, especially if we are personally unaccustomed to managing the workflow of independent writing.
What is independent writing?
Independent writing, for our purposes, refers to writing that students complete for their own goals or audiences, in forms and genres of their own choosing, about topics and themes of their own interest. And yet it is not a complete free-for-all: It is fully appropriate to establish certain expectations around quantity and quality of final copies, about peer and teacher review and feedback, and (within reason) about content. Expect, especially early in the process, to offer ideas and prompts as options for students and consider providing certain structures at times, like an author study or a “write-like” task.
Getting Started
In our curriculum, we take several approaches to getting students started in their writing each year, including asking them to mine personal memories, to comb through the advice of established writers, and to complete book or author studies for inspiration. We believe those are all still good strategies—but for many of us, the first hurdle this year is getting students started when they can’t even be in the room with us.
Explain to students that they’ll be expected to write regularly throughout the year and that this will mean not only the formal essays and research papers they’ve come to expect in school, but also a lot of their own compositions, done to follow and develop their own interests and their own voices.
As with independent reading, some portion of your students (at least one!) will already be excited about this prospect. They were writing on their own before they entered your class and they’ll continue after they leave. But you will always have students who feel wrong-footed by this idea: You mean we’re expected to just…write?
One solution is to start with fairly well-defined exercises that students can quickly feel successful in. The exercises in our guide Developing Fluency in Writing offer one example: Regular, brief challenges for students to “show, not tell” in their writing. The benefits of these are their simplicity and speed: After the process has been explained and modeled, students are given a sample “telling” sentence (any bland statement like “The car had seen better days,” will serve) and asked to develop it into a “showing” quick write, where they provide rich descriptive details to “show, not tell” the initial sentence. They are expected to write for only five minutes, and they’re encouraged to count up their words at the end as a quick measure for what they were able to generate. Any such exercise would be a quick and easy post in Google classroom, the kind enabling students to see other responses and allowing you, afterward, to showcase a few particular examples. Or—and we encourage this with just about any of this work—once students have gotten familiar with the work, have a little fun with it and ask students to read their favorite composition via Flipgrid.
Other low-barrier entries into independent writing include writing about one’s memories and experiences and attempting to take on the voice or style of an established author. Inspiration for the first can always be found in the audio recordings of StoryCorps; you can post a selection or two of your own choosing and encourage students to rummage around as well, letting the stories, questions, and conversations spark whatever thoughts they may. You may also want to check out a few selected sessions from different units of ours for easily adaptable ideas:
- “Writing is Thinking”
- “The Importance of Writing Badly”
- “Reading to Write”
- “Brainstorming Genres for Writing”
- “Scoring the Writer’s Notebook”
Lastly, encourage your students to set and monitor goals for themselves. Get them thinking about the writing they have done in the past, the types of writing they enjoy reading, the steps they might take in working on a writing project—many of these are addressed in this goal-setting sheet. Periodically, students can reflect on their progress.
Regardless of your approach, in the early days focus on building your students up: Find particular aspects of their writing to celebrate, and as much as possible, give clear and specific praise—more along the lines of “This description just jumped off the page for me!” than “Great job! Loved it!” Try to engage in their work frequently in the beginning so students feel seen and respected.
Though independent writing entails great freedom, everyone will feel more comfortable when clear and simple systems are established. You will likely want to plan specific responses to the following questions—or if you find the list of questions off-putting, skip to “Rolling Out the Systems” to read an example of how it could be implemented.
Where would you like students to keep and maintain their independent writing? Will it be in a digitally shared class folder or a student website or blog (simple enough to set up in Google Classroom), or will pieces be submitted to prompts? In this, consider asking students to maintain both a collection of “working drafts” as well as a collection of completed “published pieces.” This will make it easier to provide the right kinds of feedback at the right times.
- One approach: Ask students to keep a running digital portfolio. Their shared folder will contain (at least) two folders as described above: one for pieces they are still working on or seeking feedback on or that they have set aside for the time being, and one for pieces that have been completed and, to some degree, polished. Or, instead of a folder, students could publish their finalized selections on a blog, allowing peer conversation in the comments of each piece.
How often will student writing be reviewed? And, when it is time to review it, how will you be able to quickly tell what content is new? Any new finished pieces will likely be easy to locate, but what about significant revisions to an ongoing project?
- One approach: Start by telling students you’ll look in at their work every two weeks. Keep a running reminder in any daily assignment posts for your students (“Remember, I’ll be taking a look at your writing folders this Friday.”). Ask them to keep track of their writing in a very simple writing log—something they don’t need to update fastidiously, but can add a few comments to when they submit their work (see examples in “Rolling Out the Systems”).
When you review student work, what is your own objective? Will you be reviewing to give feedback, to check in, to give a grade for completed work? For what will students receive credit?
- One approach: Have a conversation with the class early on about fair expectations: They’ve not only got to keep up with their normal classwork for you and their other teachers, but also their independent reading and writing. What is a fair amount of writing to expect from them? What would it look like for students to write, say, 20 minutes, every other day? Our “Scoring the Writer’s Notebook” session offers some frameworks for this process.
- Consider using the check-ins primarily to review progress, provide quick feedback and encouragement, and to get ideas for mini-lessons. You might decide to give only a completion score for these, saving a more careful review for the end of the grading period. Use the rubric you’ve created with the class to guide the end-of-grading-period review.
How will you facilitate peer feedback and review? What opportunities will students have to publish for particular audiences?
- Watch student interactions carefully. These interactions should become the lifeblood of a writing community as students become interested in one another’s work, but you will need to teach students how to ask for and provide feedback. Frameworks for this include Sessions 3-A and 3-B from the Writing Narratives guide. Sentence frames, such as those found in our peer critique protocol, are an especially useful tool for guiding students into successful feedback: Students need to be taught the kinds of appropriate, respectful language that we want to see in their comments to one another.
- Prompt and require peer review, especially early on. In the beginning, plan it out and make it a specific task connected to instruction:
- “For this week’s work, I’m asking you to share a piece of writing you’ve been working on with at least 3 peers and to give feedback to at least 3 peers. Here is what that will look like: You will share your work and any specific questions or problems you’re trying to work through. When you are reviewing someone else’s work, you’ll first carefully read what they’re asking you to provide feedback about, and then you’ll carefully read their work—twice, if possible. Then, you’ll use the comment feature to…”
- Be explicit in your expectations, especially when it comes to using respectful language with one another’s work.
- Consider creating a quarterly publication with the class, such as a class website where every student is expected to submit a favorite piece of their own writing. Don’t jury this: Everyone is included.
- Help students locate online publications that accept unsolicited submissions, especially from youth. One list is included here.
Most importantly: How will you use this work to provide better, more targeted instruction to your students?
- Independent writing gives you an opportunity to see what matters to students, which is invaluable, and may give you considerable insight into what and how they are feeling. This can (and should!) help you shape your daily interactions with the class.
- It also opens up a window into students’ writing habits in a way that periodic, once-ever-few-weeks essays do not, and you should absolutely keep lists of ideas for mini-lessons as they come to you. Are you seeing the same types of problems come up in their punctuation (for example, confusion around dialogue)? That would make an excellent mini-lesson for error journal work. What about plotting—would students benefit from thinking about when to speed up and when to slow down? There are plenty of opportunities for using Targeted Writing Resources, too.
- Keep an eye out for strong work that can be used as an exemplar: Nothing helps a learner understand the expectations better than actually seeing an example. In keeping with our recommendations about feedback, you’ll want to use exemplars for specific purposes—for example, helping students see what it looks like to use dialogue to develop a character. Clearly point out what works well in the selection so students know what to look for in it.
Perhaps the above seems overwhelming—fair enough! Let’s talk through one way this could play out: As described earlier, you talk your students through the fact that they’ll be doing independent writing this year, and you preview a few ideas of what this can look like. Next, you help them understand how they can organize their work: They’ll be creating and sharing an independent writing folder with you, and inside that folder will be two subfolders—one for works-in-progress and one for finished pieces. The contents of these folders should be viewable by the teacher and the student should grant at least the ability to comment. The other important thing they need to create is a writing log, like the grid below:
Check-in date: | What I’ve been working on lately (include link/where to find it): | My question, sticking point, or desired feedback: | Reader comments: |
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This will make check-ins and peer review much simpler to keep track of: On the due date, students will make a few quick notes describing what they’ve been working on, include a link to it, and write down any particular questions or sticking points they’re trying to work through. Most of your own comments will probably end up on the document itself, but quick general notes can be added here as well.
Explain that you’d like them to set aside some time to write each week—every day or every other day—on a topic or project of their own interest. You’ll set out some frameworks or some ideas to start with, have them set goals for themselves, post a few reminders along the way, and when the time comes, you’ll post an assignment in Google Classroom where they can submit their writing log (with a link to their writing) for you to review. Maybe give them one week for the first post, with the idea that a quick turnaround might increase momentum, and note that the first response may not be close to a “finished” piece.
For this first submission especially, focus on specific praise you can give and feel free to ask open-ended questions in the comment boxes: Can you tell me more about this part? What is the other character thinking about while this is happening? Keep in mind that you are beginning to model the kinds of feedback you’d like students to give one another soon—in fact, you might ask a student if you can share their writing and your comments with the class to talk through this part. For your own internal accounting, just take note of whether each student submitted something for review, and while you read, keep a running list of ideas for instruction: pacing, opening lines, dialogue, description, etc. Fill out the comment section of their writing log.
Check-in date: | What I’ve been working on lately (include link/where to find it): | My question, sticking point, or desired feedback: | Reader response: |
10/16/20 | – I worked on some of the quick writes posted for the class. I might come back to some of them. | I feel stuck with how to bring the short story to a close. I basically know what happens – he lets them all go – but I’m having trouble writing it. | You may already be doing this, but one thing you might think about is expanding on what he’s thinking during this. You’ve already written what happens, but I agree that it seems like it needs something more, and as a reader I wonder about what he’s thinking and feeling. Is there a sense of loss? Are there other emotions mixed in? You don’t necessarily have to say exactly what’s in his head, either. If someone were watching him, what would they think they saw? |
10/30/20 (peer review) | I started a story about my trip to Atlanta last summer. I think I’m about halfway through with it. Link: XXXXXX | I feel like I started out with an idea but it seems kind of all over the place now, like it’s just going to keep going on and on. I’m not sure if it makes sense. | I see what you mean about that. Sometimes it did seem to be going a lot of different places. What I thought was most interesting was when you were talking about how you’d always wanted to go, but how it was different from what you’d expected. Maybe you could focus more on that? – Jake |
Let them know that in two weeks, they’ll be submitting more writing, but this time they’ll be sharing it with a few peers. Depending on circumstances, you might let students choose two partners to work with, assign groups of 3-4 students to work together, or ask them to post their work into an open class forum. In the meantime, continue your regular instruction, and consider dropping in one or two mini-lessons on providing writing feedback. When the check-in date arrives, students should share the piece they’re working on and any questions they have for their peers. Require students to read and respond to one another’s work within a set timeframe that seems fair and to update their writing log with the appropriate information. As you are able, skim through the students’ writing and through the feedback, this time focusing more on the student interactions: What do you see students doing well as they respond to one another? What do you need to provide further instruction on?
From here forward, aim to maintain a rhythm where students submit their work alternately to you and to their peers. Between every submission, include a mini-lesson or two that responds to the needs you are seeing in their work. At the end the grading session, review students’ finished and unfinished pieces, ask them to reflect on their goals and their progress, and award them credit based either on their goals and reflections or on a set of expectations that you’ve worked out with the class.
Reflect on what worked and what didn’t, adjust for the next grading period, and keep going! You may find you need more or fewer check-ins, or that your class has built up a rhythm of its own and no longer needs distinct teacher/peer review days, or that you need to radically reshape how peer review happens. Salt to taste, as they say—or as we say, you are here to teach students, not texts, so work to figure out what their unique needs are and go from there.
It’s easy for students to lose track of self-directed work amidst the regular flow of assigned readings and daily tasks from all of their classes. You may wish to include a reminder of the next check-in date in every post for the class. If you are a Google Classroom user, you can also use the “topics” feature to organize prompts and writing ideas that you come across for easy access. Remember there’s no requirement that students only write narrative fiction, so if you come across interesting inspiration for other types of work, feel free to drop it into the mix.
Spread some joy by calling out excellent moments in student work from time to time, and even if it’s as simple as asking students to work through one of the Targeted Writing Resources for narrative, be sure to include instruction that will help them find their voices and reach their writing goals. Getting students to write more regularly is a wonderful thing, but it isn’t a solution on its own: They still need instruction and interaction to grow. Especially early on, you can expect to see all of the typical struggles:
- Students who “can’t think of anything to write about,” or who don’t even seem to attempt to.
- Students who crank out perfunctory, disengaged writing.
- Students who don’t seem to focus on anything that makes them (or their writing) come alive, but only on what they think will earn them high marks.
Be patient and keep striving to connect with your students and, as we always do, take the next step as it comes. Model what you would do as a writer when you hit any of the same stumbling blocks. Push students to come up with solutions on a message board where they can keep adding and responding to ideas, creating a list they can always come back to when they feel stuck.
Expanding the work: Projects, Special Topics, and Additional Resources
Inquiry By Design materials contain some wonderful writing projects. Some of these have been linked to units at particular grade levels, but because their content is applicable to a wide age-range, we want to open them up to wider use—especially at a time like this. Below you will find some excerpts of IBD materials that could kick off wonderful writing work, some reflection and goal-setting frameworks, narrative writing lessons, and a few other odds and ends, including links to outside resources and information we think you might appreciate. Take a look!
- The Author Study
- In the author study, students select a favorite author and conduct a long-term investigation into the author’s style, examining and charting different examples of strategies and habits they notice. These observations can then form the basis for the student’s own writing. The sessions establish a method for organizing and assessing this long-term project.
- The Independent Writing Project
- In the independent writing project, students create a proposal and a scoring contract for a writing project of their own choice. As with the author study, the sessions provide a framework for organizing, assessing, and reflecting upon this work. Students are also encouraged to seek publication of their writing project in one of a number of print or online venues.
- Open-ended “write-like” task
- This narrative task is meant to build on existing class work with a narrative text. It asks students to focus on a particular strategy or technique of the author’s to bring into their own writing.
- Narrative Targeted Writing Resources
- “Scoring the Writer’s Notebook”
- “Setting Goals for Independent Writing”
- “The Writer’s Memo” and “Responding to and Revising Writing”
- “Getting Published”
- “Online Writing Resources”
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