Chapter 8 Organize for Daily Writing

Provide More Choice Within Meaningful Structure
I was glad when Routman addressed this idea in the chapter. It was something that I had been curious about. I have found the greatest amount of success with my students when I apply the idea of giving students the freedom of choice within a predetermined topic. Routman also suggests that a teacher should demonstrate choosing a topic for writing, so students learn how to effectively choose their own topic. I have not demonstrated specific topics that I am writing myself but I have used different scenarios to demonstrate choosing a topic. For example: I might say, "If my daughter were going to write on this topic she might choose to write about her trip to Washington D.C.. This topic is really large! How could she write about her experience in D.C., but narrow the topic?"

Recently, when my students were to choose from four drafts they had previously written to publish, way too many of them chose their weakest piece of writing to publish. This really surprised me. Which lead me back to Routman's comment: "the topic is the single most important factor contributing to writer variability." I didn't want to discourage my students by contradicting their choice; which to some would mean they really didn't have a choice to begin with, but I also didn't want my students stuck writing on a topic that they clearly could not develop well. When I came across the following questions Routman listed I thought this would be an excellent way to handle the situation. Do you care about the subject? Can you tell a lot about it? Can you include appropriate and interesting details? I will use these questions or similar ones with my students in the future.