Donald Graves: A Fresh Look at Writing – Demonstrations

I first met my friend Donald Graves in 1992 when I attended the University of New Hampshire Writing Program. Donald has had a greater impact on my teaching than any other mentor. When I visit writing classes to see if they are successful I always use his chapter titled, “The Seven Conditions for Effective Writing, from his book, A Fresh Look at Writing, 1994,  to determine if that teacher is on the right track. He writes on edemonstrations:

You, the teacher, are the most important factor in creating a learning environment in the classroom. Your students will observe how you treat writing in your own life, how you learn, and what is important to you through the questions you ask of the world around you. How you demonstrate values, how you knowledgeably show the meaning of writing as a craft will have a profound effect on their learning.

When I began teaching, I didn’t show my students how to work with their writing. I merely corrected. I didn’t know any other way. When you actually take your own text and put it on the chalkboard, an overhead projector, or experience chart paper, and show your stu­dents how you read it, they will receive the clearest demonstration of what writing is all about. (Chapter 13 will discuss in greater detail how to demonstrate reading writing with your students.)

Students can go a lifetime and never see another person write, much less show them how to write. Yet it would be unheard of for an artist not to show her students how to use oils by painting on her own canvas, or for a ceramist not to demonstrate how to throw clay on a wheel and shape the material himself. Writing is a craft. It needs to be demonstrated to your students in your classroom, which is a stu­dio, from choosing a topic to finishing a final draft. They need to see you struggle to match your intentions with the words that reach the page.

To demonstrate the meaning of conventions, you offer “meaning lessons.” You show your second-grade children where quotation marks are placed and what they are for: “I’m going to put these marks here because I want to know where my person starts to speak… see if you can tell where this person stops speaking. Come up here and put your finger in that very place where they stop speaking. Good. These are the marks I put here because they help me and the reader to know where this person speaks.”

Every mark on the page is art act of meaning. The words march across the page from left to right. Words are spelled the same way every time they’re used. Spaces go between words. Periods go at the end of the sentence. The conventions are as much for the writer as for the reader. I won’t know what I mean until I have set my thoughts on the page in a conventional text.

In my writing with the class I demonstrate a mood of discovery and experimentation. “Hmmm, I wonder where my writing is going to go. I’m not sure if I’ll write about the way people use the mirrors in the weight room, or my own reaction to the mirrors (see Chapter 3). I’ve got two things here; I guess I’ll keep writing about my reaction to the mirrors.” I demonstrate curiosity about what thoughts are around the next comer.