At my school, we’re a big fan of modeling. No… not that kind of modeling. There are no chic poses or fine fabrics involved. I’m talking about the catwalk that writing teachers walk when they demonstrate the process of writing in front of their students. This is a strategy that seems so simple, yet takes a lot of practice and guts to do. When we teach manual skills, like changing a tire or swinging a bat, it feels so natural to demonstrate what the skill looks like. But a more intellectual skill, like writing, for some reason doesn’t always invoke that same instinct. We explain and explain, telling our students to do something, all the while overlooking the possibility that showing them how to do it might be better! In my experience, student feedback confirms that it is better–they often mention how helpful it is to see writing modeled.

Earlier this year, my department was fortunate enough to be part of a workshop with Kelly Gallagher at the Wisconsin Council of Teachers of English Convention. Here’s a great snap of us with Kelly, so happy to meet one of our teaching idols once again:

At the workshop, we were reminded keenly of the power of modeling when it comes to the reading, writing, and thinking skills we hope to see from students–Gallagher phrases it as “I go, you go.” First, the teacher demonstrates the writing skill, then the students try it out on their own. Ideally, this should be happening constantly in the writing classroom. But embracing modeling can mean getting a little bit vulnerable as a teacher… when you’re writing in front of students without having your words prepared beforehand, you’ll have lapses in ideas, moments of confusion, and probably some typos. Here’s the secret: that’s the best part about it all! When students see us struggle a little bit in the production of writing, it brings us down to earth for them. It helps them to understand that writing doesn’t just emerge fully formed from anyone’s hand, no matter how much experience is behind it. They start to see writing less as a mysterious, built-in talent and more as a problem solving process. If the quality of the writing doesn’t turn out too well on the first try, it just creates an ideal opportunity to model some on-the-spot revision!

When I do modeling in my classroom, I bring up a blank notebook page on my document camera and just start writing away. If you don’t have a document camera, you can use Google Docs or the good old-fashioned chalkboard. I instruct my students to also take out their own notebooks to write along with me as I model. (Yep, they create their own example by writing exactly what I write, word for word. This might sound odd, but I’ve actually read in many writing guides that copying down the work of better writers somehow helps us internalize new skills in phrasing and style. Author Hunter S. Thompson reportedly once copied the entirety of The Great Gatsby by hand.) In the teacher-writer role, I verbally get as meta-cognitive as possible, narrating not only what I’m writing, but why I’m making language choices along the way. Sometimes I’ll also define words or pose questions. Let me show you how it works!

In our current synthesis writing unit, our Communications III team is using This American Life as a way to introduce the concept of synthesis–like a synthesis essay, the show revolves around a central idea, presents the viewpoint of the author (host), and uses disparate sources to create a conversation about the central idea. To kick off our unit, we showed them an episode entitled “Reality Check.” After each segment, I paused the video to discuss and relate it back to synthesis. Since I’ll be asking my students to write a synthesis piece later in the unit, I’m modeling writing skills whenever I can, in order to get them trained up. In this case, I wanted them to get comfortable with the ideas of “giving context” and “connecting to the big idea” when introducing a source. In a complicated task like synthesis, building little skills like these are valuable tools to refer back to when we get into the real deal. It’s nothing fancy, but it doesn’t have to be. View and click below to see the examples I created with my students and listen to my think-aloud to get an idea for what modeling looks like on the average day in Room 310.

What I said (please pardon the pauses as I stop to write):

What we wrote:

For the third portion of the episode, students write their own context + connection to the big idea, so I can get an idea of how well they understood this skill. I don’t worry at this point if their words turn out being “mysteriously similar” to those in my models–we’re in the training wheels stage, and they may not be ready to experiment with words independently just yet in this context. They will get there when they feel strong! The idea is to give them exposure to as many writing skills as possible so they’re ready to apply them when drafting begins. On Monday, we’re working on commas, colons, and semicolons in complex sentences. One thing at a time. 🙂

I wouldn’t say I’m a supermodel like Kelly Gallagher quite yet. But I’m walking the walk as best I can. I hope you will consider doing the same, and see some great things result from your students’ work. Be the model you were born to be!