Monday, 2 March 2015

Mentoring student writers

For the last two classes of my Writing Across the Curriculum class, we have been mentoring student writers at Hawthorne Public School, where I am doing my placement and practica. I am working with three of my Grade 5/6 students from my fall practicum.

During our first time together as mentor and mentees, I had them each write a poem and I participated as well.  They were to write nine lines, without using the word “writing” and were to title their poem “The Beauty of Writing” or “The Trouble with Writing”.  I adopted this idea (“leveraged” if you are using Government of Canada speak) from Deanna Young, a professional poet who visited our class at UofO.  I’m sure she would be happy with me leveraging her idea, since she is also an employee of the GoC and must fully understand the common practice of leveraging.

We realized after sitting there for quite some time that these students needed fewer lines so we lifted the requirement of nine lines to take the pressure off.

Here are the poems that my students wrote:

The Trouble with Writing by Kevin
I hate to write/It is so annoying and painful to see my mark/I want to rip up my mark/The words are very boring/I hate “dead words”/I hate to write.

The Beauty of Writing by Aarohi
A way of expressing feelings such as/depression/happiness/fear/anger etc/A way to put feelings onto paper/Writer’s block is like a block in front of your thinking capacity/if you have an idea it breaks through the block/that’s the beauty of writing.

The Beauty of Writing by Andy
I enjoy watching my fingers dance across the keyboard/I love watching a story being created word by word/I take pleasure in waiting for the mark that I will receive knowing/that I got good marks/how I love the beauty of writing.

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