Celebrating Writing

I am enjoying reading Routman.  The "12 Writing Essentials" are a helpful resource.  Looking at the 12 Essentials made me reflect on all of the different components of writing - only two of which have anything to do with conventions!  This is not to say (and I think Routman is not dismissing them) that conventions are not important but that they are only one piece of good writing. Therefore, focusing on conventions to the exclusion of everything else is short sighted at best.

Making writing more meaningful and enjoyable to students is extremely important. My daughter's school uses Writer's Workshop which is ostensibly a program that is supposed to get students writing more.  However, it focuses (at least in the earlier years) almost exclusively on writing about "small moments" in the student's life.  The theory is that kids know about their own lives.  Unfortunately, the curriculum writers in this case forgot something else: kids have rich imaginations.  My daughter (a kindergartener at the time) was so frustrated and bored by the end of the year.  She was tired of writing about "small moments" and it was a struggle to get her to write.  I think it is important to let kids play with writing and write using all sorts of styles and genres.