Strategies for Nurturing Confident Upper Elementary Writers

Building a strong writing community in a classroom helps students feel that they have a voice and their thinking matters. By writing, students solidify their learning and develop new insights. Their writing skills improve, which impacts what they are able to communicate in future learning and life.

When a practice of poetry, short writes, and personal narrative is established in the classroom, writing can build a safe and inclusive classroom community and help students feel that their unique voice matters.

Implementing Dialogue Journals

I have found that dialogue journals are one of the best ways to get to know students better; to help them feel safe; and to improve writing skills, stamina, and confidence. Students write to me one to five days a week, depending on how much of a time commitment I can make to respond to them.

For example, if I have a class of 25 students, I may have them write to me three times a week early in the year and two times a week after we have established our relationships. They can write about classroom issues (that I can help them address so they feel safer), activities outside of school, problems they are trying to solve, or classroom content (like a character we have been reading about). Students know that their journals are their own and that they don’t need to share them with other students, which builds a sense of trust. They also know that if something they write about concerns me, I will share it with our school counselor.

When our 10-to-15-minute writing routine happens at the beginning of the day, students can settle in, and I can read their journals to get a sense of where they are. It takes time to respond to each student, so I am mindful of the time I can allot in my own schedule to write. It is important to have a routine for which days they will write in journals, but I sometimes add a session if I can sense that students need quiet time and time to communicate with me about a class concern.

I respond to every student each time they write, answering any questions they ask and striving to learn more about them as learners and people. I keep my responses shorter than their entries, because the journal is about them and their writing. I also model correct spelling, sentence structure, and grammar in my responses so they learn from the model.

For example, if a student writes, “I had a wondrfl time on our field trip,” I can respond with “I thought the trip was wonderful too!” so that the student sees correct spelling; however, I do not correct their errors or mark up their writing in any way. Feedback on writing errors can happen at other times of the day, with other types of writing.

Other Ways to Build a Strong Writing Community

Poetry is a beautiful way for students to feel safe to express their unique voice. Because poems can be short and do not have rules, many students find success writing poetry, especially some of our most reluctant writers. Poems can be imaginative, about any topic, and one idea I have played around with is writing poetry about content areas. A way to solidify or synthesize learning is through writing—for example, “Write a poem about the science process you learned today.” Poetry is a creative outlet and allows students to show off their personality and/or interests. By sharing our poems with each other, we celebrate creativity and style.

Short writes can integrate content learning and are another way to center writing. Students might write a short blurb to describe the results of an experiment during a science lesson, or I might ask them to jot down notes on how they solved a challenging math problem. When these are collected over time, students can see the breadth of their writing and their growth across the year. Short writing is a wonderful artifact to share with families, too, to celebrate learning and keep families informed of what we are doing in class.

Personal narratives are an excellent way for students to highlight their individual voice as writers and find joy in writing. Many young students love to write about themselves: memorable moments of laughter, sadness, excitement, surprise, etc. When we are writing personal narratives, I encourage students to explore all types of stories. By writing about something you experienced yourself, you are able to add feeling and sensory detail. When students share their personal narratives with their writing partners or the class, they get to know each other as people and as writers.

Ground Rules

As a writing community forms and develops, it is crucial that I set ground rules as the classroom teacher. Writing is very personal, and sharing your writing with another person can feel risky. As a rule, there is no criticism of another’s writing. We may provide suggestions or ask questions, but we do so in a respectful way and offer celebrations of strengths in the writing first.

I offer interactive modeling to demonstrate what it looks like and sounds like to be an audience, and students practice this before sharing their own writing. I also monitor students when they are in partnerships or sharing with the whole class, to ensure that they are following the ground rules and to coach students if they need to improve their respectful listening skills.

I truly believe what journalist and teacher of writing Brenda Ueland says about writing: “Everybody is talented because every human has something to express.” Students are empowered when their writing skills are strong, and they feel a sense of belonging when their writing is centered and celebrated. When writing dialogue journals, they can express ideas about ways to change and improve the classroom community. When they see evidence of these changes in action, they see the power of writing.