Response to Chapter 6 of A Writer Teaches Writing, by Donald Murray

In Chapter 6 of A Writer Teaches Writing Murray discusses activities and environments that invite writing. Teachers must continually invite students into writing. Writing should be a surprise, not only for the student, but also for the teacher. It is important that teachers are willing to diverge from the lesson plan when great discussion results from great writing. It is okay if the teacher doesn’t have all the answers; it gives the students and teacher a chance to learn together, a great benefit of writing.

            Murray recommends some of his own activities, as well as guidelines for teachers to create their own. The activities should be fun, and the students should know that it is okay if the activity is not successful. The activity is supposed to offer the students a writing tool, but not all writing tools may be beneficial for all students. For this reason, the activity should not be expected for every project, and it should not be part of the assignment. It will also be helpful for the students if the teacher does the activity on the board as an example and to show its usefulness. A few helpful activities that Murray suggests that I especially like are recall, empathy, and the trail. Recall asks students to look back on one of the most emotional experiences of their life and list in one or two words each as many specific details as they can remember. This exercise can be broken down in many ways: senses, emotional importance, chronologically, and so on. Empathy can also be done in several ways. In this activity, students are asked to think of someone as different from themselves as possible, and describe the world from that person’s point of view. They could also look at some kind of current issue and describe it from the exact opposite view of their own. This allows students to practice viewing the world from multiple views, which is helpful when writing several characters. I found the trail activity especially interesting. Students start by putting a few words at the bottom of the page as a reminder or note of the ending they plan to use. Next, have students do the same with the beginning, and then have the students write two to five points that will get the reader from the beginning to end. Finally, have the students write the questions that the reader will have to have answered to get the reader clearly from start to end. This provides a quick and easy outline for the students’ projects.

            Just as important as helpful activities to inviting writing is creating an inviting environment. Murray also gives helpful tips for this. Class size is very important. Too large of a class can be hard to work with, but a composition class can be too small as well. There needs to be a large enough class to have enough critical mass for good discussion. Murray is writing for college level instruction where professors can have control over their class size. Many middle school and high school teachers don’t have this option. In this case, I think it is beneficial to break students into small groups for certain activities to get that smaller class feel. The set up of the classroom is also important. The ideal set up would be to set up the desks or tables in a circle or square with all members of the class around the outsides. This invites equal and safe conversation. Everyone can see everyone else, and the teacher becomes a learner like the students. Any other ideas to make the classroom as safe and comfortable as possible will be beneficial for the students and the teachers, and invite surprising writing and conversation.