Writing from the heart can be an overwhelming task for students regardless of their literacy skill level. Through my experiences in different classrooms, I have noticed teachers trying to figure out strategies to use for students in order to best teach them. I have noticed that the better a teacher knows the child, the better she is able to ensure that the child is engaged in his own learning. I was not sure how to tie this into writing but it has always been a topic that I felt was important in order to become a better educator. For these reasons, I decided that I wanted to research how to better get to know your students through their writing and teaching them how to use writing as a coping strategy.
I started this project with little background knowledge about my topic. I narrowed my research to using writing to connect with students on a more personal level in order to improve engagement and learning. When students feel more comfortable in the classroom, they are more likely to share their personal ideas and experiences. When students feel they could be ridiculed or made fun of, they are more likely to be hesitant to share. This proves the importance of establishing a climate of respect for diversity in the classroom from the very first day of class. I wanted to know the best strategies for establishing a respectful classroom as well as how to get to know students through their writing. I also wanted to find out how students can use writing as an outlet and as something that they could use to record their triumphs, struggles, successes, failures, and everything in between without actually having to verbalize them. I have read stories about how students have written and shared their stories in order to relate to each other, sometimes making the biggest of enemies a close friend. This happened as a result of making connections, and I wanted to be able to have the tools to facilitate the same or similar result in my classroom. I used these ideas as a starting point for my research about writing from the heart.
Through my research, I was able to find multiple strategies for creating a classroom that fosters writing from the heart. I also found that there is a plethora of activities and resources for teachers to use when planning and implementing personal writing in the classroom. In order to share the information I acquired with other educators, I created a variety of ways to present this information. There is a newsletter, bumper stickers, diary entries, an announcement, an acrostic poem, a Tagxedo, and an informational essay. I hope you enjoy each different genre and can use it in your classroom to help your students be successful!