Today I want to write about how I plan the creative writing sessions we do in class for maximum enjoyment… my enjoyment, of course.
I don’t think that is selfish; students won’t enjoy a class that the teacher does not enjoy. And I have been enjoying teaching this year. Other teachers notice my booming laughter as I greet students and invite them inside, and they have told me that they hear our Spanish class antics throughout the day.
But how do you cultivate that kind of joy when adolescents stare muted, doodle the word ‘bored’ in the margins of their papers and otherwise embody the art of looking uninterested?
Some years ago, I wrote an essay about building a community of adventurous language learners called Calm & Clear is Better Than Loud & Lively. In that essay I urged an approach that respects beginners’ need for lots of listening & reading before expecting them to speak and write on their own. If you want a lively class of curious learners, recognize the many awkward obstacles holding beginners back from speaking in the target language. I provided an outline of how to do that in that essay (follow this link to read it).
Since writing that, I’ve been experimenting with ways to put this into practice. Here are three refinements specifically to the creative writing sessions we do that have made this year especially joyful. You can definitely apply these ideas to your Picture Talks and OWIs.
But first, remember that the creative, student-centered part of my lesson is just one part of our class—15 to 20 minutes including a quick W&D if you are teaching a 55-minute class. And you do not have to do the free style creative writing like I do. A student interview or a card talk are wonderful ways to generate student ideas. But if you find delight when you lead your picture talks and OWIs into uncharted territory, this post is for you!
Solution 1: Stop fishing for details
One innovation this year addresses a problem I had when fishing for details to build a class story. I used to start my ‘fishing expedition’ by glancing at the question words posted on my wall, flashing my laser pointer across one of them and then matching it with one of the high-frequency verbs posters. We might have, for example, two characters who have met in a school hallway. In Spanish, I would say “What…” then I would randomly choose a verb from the word wall. “…puts…”, I would announce in Spanish, then I return to English, “hmm, what puts, how can I make this into a question… ideas? What does he put in her hand, maybe, or what does she put in his backpack…?”, then back to Spanish as I assemble a question that will move our story along.
The problem: we want to make our students’ job as easy as possible. We want every student engaged. The above approach demands that all students embrace a difficult, creative role. And I love that, but again… the tedium of teenage indifference!
So, now the ‘job’ that I require of every student is infinitely simpler yet still requires their mental engagement: they have to be ready to provide a verb from the word wall when asked. No surprise details, no shocking revelations. Just a verb. Surprisingly, this leads to a better experience! Let’s try that scene again:
In our story, we have two characters in the hallway. So far even I am bored, but I’m hiding it. I glance across the classroom and ask my student Amari, whose eyes I just notice have closed, for a verb. He opens his eyes and says “encuentra (finds)” and I respond enthusiastically. “Of course, that is the verb that will move this story along. They FIND something! Thank you, Amari”. And I make meaningful eye contact with Amari.
That eye contact communicates both: “thank you” and “I will call on you again if you close your eyes again”. But in the best outcome, he is drawn into our class story because he added a detail that was easier to imagine than the kind of creative details I used to ask for in the past. That is a win for engagement.
As I am repeating in Spanish, “Encuentran algo en el pasillo, sí, los dos estudiantes encuentran ALGO en el pasillo” , some students are often already imagining what they find. I always have a few who fully embrace the creative part. But I have a few options if they are not.
Solution 2: Give students their answer before class even begins
Last semester I wrote about having students start class with a drawing warm-up (follow this link to read that essay).
“Draw a large animal”. “Draw an object that smells bad that is not found in a bathroom (otherwise they’ll all draw pooh)”. “Draw something that costs a lot of money”. “Draw something that you cannot buy”. “Draw a body part (school appropriate!)”. Before class, they create a well of inexhaustible ideas that I can draw upon. I’m not hopelessly calling on that ‘one kid who has saved our story before’. I often call on the students who appear less engaged. Everybody is held accountable because they all have an answer sitting on their laps.
The energy in the class changes when it is everybody’s story. This is a good thing.
I can even add my own creative details now and then, without co-opting the entire story creation process. And I can reject ideas that I don’t like, because we have plenty of ideas. The story creation process hums along when everyone has a role to play.
Solution 3: A better exit plan out of story creation
I used to end the oral story creation process after about 10 minutes by turning to the board and saying in Spanish, “let’s write this on the board”. And often we had a music game to play as a transition before the cultural part of our class. That worked fine.
Now, however, I am often writing the Write & Discuss as we create the story. It is more efficient and gets their eyes on the words quicker. I’ve heard French teachers tell me that they would rather give massive amounts of oral input before students see how the words are spelled, so you’ll want to think this through with your own students.
Forget about struggling to bring the ‘plot’ to an amusing conclusion. Instead, I define the ‘end of the story’ by the number of verbs we have used. Since I am calling on students to provide verbs, I’ll announce that this is anywhere from a 5 to 10 verb story. A 10 verb story is quite long. I’m partial to 6 verb stories. These stories sometimes have endings, but sometimes they are simply tableaux vivants: a motionless scene without plot progression. That is okay.
We copy our best W&D texts into The Book of Tiny Daily Readings, which I am using with all of my classes. And then students transition smoothly to reading one of the tiny daily readings, every day.
For those of you using The Book of Tiny Daily Readings in your own classes, the readings that are in bold in the table of contents are the easiest texts with the most post-reading activities. All of the texts have all of the words defined in the margins, so everyone (regardless of their reading level) is capable of completing the activities in silence. I love that our post-story-creation activity is not a high-energy activity that encourages them to fly through story-creation! Instead, it is a quiet, independent activity that sends the message that group conversations are over.
Better yet, the tiny daily readings are building skills of reading stamina that my students really need before we start reading our own free choice books. I still do book talks and all of the other browsing activities that expose my students to my library. I am hoping that these tiny daily readings are building the skills for the strongest group of readers yet!
These refinements—simplifying student contributions, giving them ideas before class even starts, and planning a clean exit from story creation—have helped me keep my own joy alive in the classroom. And I’ve noticed that when I’m energized, students are more willing to join me, even in small ways.
Joy in teaching isn’t selfish; it’s contagious. Here’s to building more classrooms where both teachers and students look forward to what happens next.
– Mike
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