Letting a Child Choose their Topic

In my seven odd years as a teacher, I have been witness to several heated discussions on letting students choose their own topics for writing. My own classroom experience has shown me that allowing children to decide what they want to write can be a strong motivator. Donald Graves who is an authority on children and writing and who I have read many times, believes that "writers can only write about what they know" As teachers I think we need to recognize that feeding students topics, sentence starters and/or themes that we want them to write about not only takes away their creative freedom, it risks developing students who are dependent upon others for their ideas. In many cases the topics that we ask our students to write about are about things that interest us not them. I remember asking students to write about things they did in the summer. A few students said "that their summers were boring, we didn't do anything". I asked if they had gone to Center Island (assuming that everyone in Toronto knew about Center Island). Both said that they had never heard of it! It was at that moment that I realised that what happens in my world does not happen in everyone else's. That experience changed my approach to letting students choose their own topics. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that we need to completely step away from helping our students choose a topic - our role as a teacher and parent is to guide, support and nurture their minds, hearts and souls, but we need to help them see that they do have things to write about (real life or fiction) - sometimes they just need to be encouraged. I feel quite strongly that we need to acknowledge the lives our students live both in and out of school. Taking time to learn about our students lives at home, their interests, and their hobbies can only help our understanding of what drives them in the classroom. Uninterested, struggling and unengaged students need to be able to tap into the things or activities that provide them with the feeling of success. As teachers we are constantly told to set students up for success, not failure. What better way then tapping into the things that really interest them and then letting them write about them?" The answer: "one that permits students to draw on their ideas and interpretations. By allowing students frequently to choose their own topics, we enable them to use a richer knowledge base that may increase the likelihood of their producing more sophisticated writing." I don't think I could say it any better!

Unlocking the power of a child's unofficial world

What is a child's unofficial world and why am I interested in it? My understanding is that the unofficial world of a student includes anything that takes place outside of school. This can include their families, their hobbies, their friends, T.V., music, books, video games, board games. The list could go on and on. The main focus for me looking at a child's unofficial world is to determine how a teacher and a mother like me can use it (ie. interest in: video games, T.V., comics, anime, and Pokemon) to motivate my students (in particular boys) and son to write. I think that teachers and parents need to understand how important it is for a child's learning to value as much (or maybe more) what our children do outside the classroom as what they do inside of it.

In the past decade the media has zeroed in on how poorly boys are performing relative to girls in literacy (reading and writing). Governments in Australia, New Zealand, Britain, Canada and the United States have spent considerable amounts of money funding research in the hope of explaining this phenomenon. What a lot of the research suggests is that for boys to be successfully engaged in literacy, the material needs to be:

• of personal interest to the boy;
• include active aspects vs. passive ones;
• provide built-in success for each boy;
• be fun; and
• have some relevance to the boy's life
  

If you have a son or have a number of boys in your classrooms then the above suggestions shouldn't be a surprise. As teachers I know we are continually be told to know our students. If I ignore what my students do outside of the classroom and limit them to the traditional curriculum resources that I have in my classroom then aren't I doing the opposite of getting to know them? Learning should be fun especially when you're young after all we want our children to want to continue to learn about new things, take chances and feel that their knowledge from outside and inside the class is of value. Inviting our children to bring their unofficial worlds into the official world of school seems to me like a brilliant idea.

If you are interested in reading some of this research you can be access it by clicking on the link entitled "research".