Question+7

How do you teach students to discover their writing voices?

I have mentor texts or scout internet.

Megan Nelson The writing voices inside our heads can be transferred onto paper. A writer's voice is natural and comes through when he or she speaks, so teachers must show students how to get this voice onto paper. During journal or free writing, when students tell about their weekends or special events in their lives, this voice typically comes through because the students do not feel pressured to write in a certain way. Students need to feel confident in their writing abilities before their voices can come through or be heard in their other writing. Teachers must encourage students and teach them how to listen to the voices inside their heads, which may be telling them what to write and how to write it. Teachers can show students how to do this with the help of mentor texts. There are several mentor texts suggestions for voice, such as __Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day__, __Because of Winn-Dixie__, __I Wanna Iguana__, and __First Year Letters.__

__Elyce Rickerl__

How do you teach students to discover their writing voices? As discussed in an earlier question, students can find their writing voices by delving deeply into the discovery of their writing territories. By using such brainstorming methods as listing, hand mapping, and heart mapping, students can be supported in their ability to choose and narrow a topic. Part of developing a writer’s voice is developing an understanding of the point of writing as opposed to merely a topic for writing. The development of writing voices can be supported a great deal with the use of poetry. Mentor texts should exhibit many different types of poetic form, showing students that poems do not always just have to rhyme. Teachers should encourage students to examine the structure and word choice used to convey a particular emotion or appeal to our senses in the poem. Students can be supported in their ability to do this themselves with assignments like found poetry, where they borrow words from another text and arrange them into a poetic format. Students can then work on developing their own unique writer’s voice by evaluating their decisions with emotion and word choice in poetry. Just as students recognize a friend on the phone by his or her voice, so can they incorporate their own unique voice into their writing. Elyce Rickerl