Take Time for Creative Writing

Students at the middle grade school level are receiving some time to write academically, usually in the Language Arts classroom, but are receiving substantially little time, if any, on writing freely in an environment that is not going to be correcting and marking what writing pieces they produce. Without this freedom creative writing will be discouraged as students will see this type of writing as unimportant since even the school ignores this activity.In Teaching Adolescent Writers, Kelly Gallagher identifies ten factors that contribute to the increasing number of adolescents who are struggling to write:

1. Students are not doing enough writing.
2. Writing is sometimes assigned rather than taught.
3. Below-grade level writers are asked to write less than others instead of more than others.
4. English language learners are often shortchanged as well (low expectations of studentsin general).
5. Grammar instruction is ineffective or ignored.
6. Students are not given enough timed writing instruction or practice.
7. Some teachers have little or no knowledge of district and state writing standards.
8. Writing topics are often mandated with little thought about the prior knowledge and interests of the students.
9. Teachers are doing too much of the work. Students are not doing enough work.
10. Teachers need help assessing student writing (9-13).

From Gallagher’s points of view it is obvious he is referring to writing within the classroom. If a teacher were to take these suggestions to heart and do them, the classroom environment would still be preparing students for some sort of assessment. Therefore they are not in an environment that exists to specifically help and encourage them to be better writers without a rubric.The curricula for many grade levels has some stress on creative writing but teachers are likely to find themselves in the position of teaching creative writing as a unit and not as a year long activity. This is understandable given the amount of curricula to cover for any one class, let alone if the teacher is teaching several subjects.

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