Emma Olson

2 May 2022

EDU 443

Writing Reflection

Writing instruction is important to bring into the classroom for several reasons.

Throughout a student’s academic career, they will be required to write in a multitude of ways for

varying purposes. This can be anywhere from academic writing such as essays, which quickly

become the only type of writing that students do as they grow older, to creative writing for

themselves. Teaching writing instruction is important because it gives students the tools that they

need to succeed as students and even in their careers. The types of writing all need direct

instruction in different ways. Essay writing is usually first taught using templates to teach

students the process of making claims while the different genres of creative writing are often

taught directly. Writing Workshop helps students to find their writing identities since they allow

students to freely explore many different types of writing on their own terms, relatively. It also

gives students the chance to write without concern for critiques so that they can become

comfortable with their own writing and write about topics that interest them. Writing Workshop

teaches more effectively than traditional forms of writing because it allows students to write

more than they would if they were expected to hand in all of their work, and it lets them improve

their writing with the bigger picture in mind rather than the red pen of reviews and feedback that

mainly focuses on grammar.

I would likely have the students do Writing Workshop around two times a week since

students would only have one English block per day in middle school. I might have Writing

Workshop Wednesdays and have them free-write for a period on another day of the week. This
way, they would have some sort of guidelines on Wednesdays, but be given much more choice

on another day. On Wednesdays, students might be given a prompt or a mini-lesson detailing a

genre and a mentor text. Then, they would have the freedom on another day of the week to either

work on a previous writing or start a new one to further explore their writing identity. I believe I

would do this on Fridays and call them free-write Fridays. I would likely use my revisions made

visible to explain the personal editing process to students early in the year so that they know how

to work on previous Writing Workshops if they would like to. I would try to force students to

have to revise so that they can practice this by giving them a shortened writing time for their first

draft. Then, I would give them the normal amount of time for a revision phase. This would

simply show them the concept so that they could use it in the future by giving them examples of

what the phases of revision might look like.

I would like to develop my creative writing more. I have not had much opportunity for

creative writing since elementary and middle school. I am very passionate about creative writing,

but I think I need more practice with it. I would like to develop my writing ability more by taking

time to write creatively when unencumbered by other classwork. It is hard to motivate myself to

write in my spare time when I could be writing for academic purposes instead. It feels like I am

shirking my responsibilities when I do things that are time-consuming for my enjoyment when I

have other things that I could be doing.