How to Get Students to Write Well

What are the best methods of getting students to write? Not just to write though, to want to write well. I have reviewed three scholarly articles to try to help me grasp how to get my future students to understand what they’re writing about, to get them to write it well, and to get them to want to write it instead of just fulfilling the assignment. 

Two of the three articles make a solid point that the children need to be interested in the material in order for them to write well. Katie Wood Ray’s states in her article, “Why Cauley Writes Well: A Close Look at What a Difference Good Teaching Can Make” from the magazine Language Arts (Vol. 82.2, 2004), that one of the reason kids write well is because they like the topic. Ray’s article recounts how Lisa Cleaveland, an elementary teacher, gets her students to write well by letting them be their own authors with their own ideas. They get to choose their topic and they get to make their own works about what they want to write about. This is what makes them write, and through the process of writing they get better at the mechanics of writing. 

Jill Dillard and William P. Bintz share similar reviews in their article “Seeing Writing Instruction Differently: Lessons with Lasting Impressions” also from the Language Arts journal (Vol. 82.2, 2004). Dillard is a third grade teacher who focuses on children who are behind in writing for their grade level. She struggled with getting her students to want to write, but after adopting the style of Donald Graves, which is to relate to the students personally so they want to share themselves with you and then have them write what they were telling you down, they were clamoring to write stories. Dillard and Bintz point out that having them write personal experiences makes an explosive start. It makes them want to write, the first step in the writing process.