All ELA teachers know the importance of teaching writing. You have to teach students how to form ideas for writing, how to organize their ideas, and how to edit their writing. However, possibly the greatest challenge for English Language Arts teachers is to teach their students how to overcome writing anxiety.
Writing anxiety is debilitating for those that have it, and a mystery for those that don’t. Most ELA teachers become educators because they are passionate about reading and writing. Therefore, writing anxiety can make some students difficult to relate to and connect with.
Or maybe, you had writing anxiety as a child and became a teacher because you wanted to help students that struggle to get their thoughts down on paper as well.
Regardless, we need to find ways to connect with these students. If you have had students like this in the past, you know that forcing them to write is not an effective strategy. You may not be able to get students to love writing, but hopefully, with the right resources and approach, we can get students to shed the fear of writing.
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How to Overcome Writing Anxiety Tip #1
Be creative! Find ways to get students to express themselves without writing formal paragraphs. Some alternatives are mind maps, word trains, and flashcard creation.
There’s nothing worse than a student with writing anxiety being told they HAVE to fill an entire page with paragraphs.
How to Overcome Writing Anxiety Tip #2
Use technology. Perhaps the student has been told that they can’t spell or have terrible handwriting. Thanks to digital resources like Google Docs and Google Sheets, students don’t have to put pen to paper all of the time.
You’ll notice when looking at the teaching standards, nowhere does it say that students need to handwrite to be evaluated.
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My Favourite Resource for Reluctant Writers
Something I’ve been doing with my students is taking away the pressure of writing. One way I do this is to have students work on one paragraph a week.
That’s it. Just one.
I give my students a topic that I think they can relate to and have them work on one paragraph each day.
I created this resource to cover each writing style. The students work on the same writing style for 8 weeks before moving on to the next one.
In my experience, students enjoy working on their paragraphs because they are writing about themselves and they don’t have to worry about filling a whole page.
Click here to check out my recent blog post about this resource.
Click here to check out the resource.
Another reason I love this resource so much is it is digital. Meaning I simply share the link to the google slides on Google Classroom, and students submit it on Google Classroom when they are done.
Final Thoughts
Reluctance to writing can be stressful. Not only is it stressful for the teachers because they need to teach it to their students, but it can be traumatic for students if they have a fear of writing.
Taking small steps, such as working on one paragraph at a time, are strategies that can improve your students’ writing stamina.
Do you have reluctant/nervous writers in your class? What do you do to help them? Comment below!
PS- Don’t forget to download my free “Roadmap To Curriculum Mapping Success” by clicking here.
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