An important lesson I want my students to take away from my class is to look more closely at writing and to appreciate writing. To start having my students think about good writing, I have them bring in their own examples of what they think is good writing. I then have students write in their writing notebooks their ideas of good writing. They get into groups and share their ideas and create one list. I then have each group share their ideas and we make a list on chart paper. I took a picture of our chart this year:
I then have the students share their examples of good writing with each other. I come back to this lesson and we look at what we feel are good writing samples throughout the year. I find it helps the students to appreciate writing when they read, and I find that they write content with more meaning. I am always reminding them of what we agreed on was good writing, and encourage them to use these ideas in their own writing.
