Donald Graves: A Fresh Look at Writing – Structure

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. Donald writes:

The writing classroom requires a high degree of structure. When children face the empty page, they suddenly feel alone and want to talk or move around the room. But if children are to choose topics or fig­ure out how they will solve writing problems, they need a highly pre­dictable classroom.

Teachers help the room to be predictable when they:

•Have students write each day. If students miss a day or don’t know when they will write                    again, they are losing a sense of structure and predictability

• Establish a basic structure for the student to follow, a writing time, such as, “First, get your folders containing all your writ­ing, write, and then share writing”

• Set up procedures for solving problems. Basic procedures have been posted telling students what to do when they don’t have the right supplies, are stuck for a topic, need to confer with another student, need help proofreading their writing.

• Circulate among the students. The teacher contributes to structure by moving through the class conferring with stu­dents, so that students feel the teacher’s listening presence.

• Negotiate class management problems with students. When issues such as noise or how to work with others arise, the teacher discusses new ways to solve these problems with the students.

The classroom is not structured for writing alone. Indeed, if writing is the only structured time in the self-contained classroom over an entire day, then the hope that students will learn to make choices and take the initiative is an empty one. Teachers can help to ensure the condi­tions for effective learning by carefully delegating the jobs necessary to maintaining the classroom and showing children how to do these jobs. As the year advances, the jobs become more and more sophisticated. (Chapter 8 talks further about how to develop a structured classroom.)