Graves on "Conditions for Effective Writing" (1994) and "All Children Can Write" (1985)

I didn't realize until i wrote the introduction for Nancie Atwell's In the Middle that good writing doesn't result from any particular methodology. Rather, the remarkable work of her students was a result of the conditions for learning she created in her classroom. This chapter is intended to give you an overview of the conditions that encourage good writing... (59)

Time

• Only when children read and write on their own because they have experienced the power of literacy can we speak of the significance of time on task.
• If students are not engaged in writing at least four days out of five, and for a period of thirty-five to forty minutes, beginning in first grade, they will have little opportunity to learn to think through the medium of writing. Three days a week are not sufficient. 
• They need daily writing time to be able to move their pieces along until they accomplish what they set out to do. (58-59)

Choice

• Children need to learn how to choose their own topics when they write. 
• Worse, it had nothing to do with what writing is for: to help students learn to think through the issues and concerns of their everyday lives. (61)
• When children choose their own topics, I can expect more of their writing. (61)
• How easy it is to teach our students to write dishonestly to fulfill curriculum requirements. Indeed, a student's entire diet from first grade through high school can be a series of one dishonest piece after another. Sadly, the student can graduate without learning that writing is the medium through which our most intimate thoughts and feelings can be expressed. (62)

Response

• When I began to teach--and for many years afterward--I only responded to students' work when they had finished writing. At that point I corrected their papers and made a few comments lauding or condemning what they'd written. But that wasn't teaching, and what is worse, I was the only person responding to their texts. The students wrote for me, and only me.(62)
• It is important that you take children's choices seriously. Your response to a child's text helps him to realize what he set out to do when he stated to write. 
• Students need to hear the responses of others to their writing, to discover what they do or do not understand. The need to help students know how to read their own work, and the owkr of their classmates, provides further teaching and demonstration opportunities. 
• My first response to student work comes in the form of short conferences as I move around the classroom during writing time. 
• This end of class experience affirms the essential conditions for writing: in this class we experiment and learn. (63)

Demonstration

• When I began teaching, I didn't show my students how to work with their writing. I merely corrected. I didn't know any other way. When you actually take your own text and put it on the chalkboard, an overhead projector, or chart paper, and show your students how you read it, they will receive the clearest demonstration of what writing is all about. (63)
• Students can go a lifetime and never see another person write, much less show them how to write. 
• Writing is a craft. It needs to be demonstrated to your students in your classroom, which is a studio, from choosing a topic to finishing a final draft. They need to see you struggle to match your intentions with the words that reach the page. 
• In my writing with the class I demonstrate a mood of discovery and experimentation. "Hymn, I wonder where my writing is going to go. I'm not sure..." I demonstrate curiosity about what thoughts are around the next corner. (64)

Expectation

• I have high expectations for every one of my students. To have high expectations is a sign of caring. (64)

Room Structure

• ...if children are to choose topics or figure out how they will solve writing problems, they need a highly predictable classroom. (65)

Evaluation

• When children choose their own topics, they need to know how to decide if their choices are good ones. They need to know how to evaluate their own work. Here again, the teacher can show children how to read their own work--by reading her own. Indeed, the teacher's entire effort is geared to helping children learn how to examine their own work at a level appropriate to their developing abilities. (66)
• Teachers do have an important role in evaluation, but it consists primarily of helping children become part of the process. (66)
• In all of these ways, children gain practice in using the language of evaluation in reading their own work and that of their classmates, language that has traditionally been viewed as the teacher's property. (66)

Teacher-As-Writer

Cultivating a classroom that encourages and sustains writing takes far more work than [other] methods because it forces us to look first at ourselves and our own writing. In one sense, teachers are the chief "condition" for effective writing. (67)

Sum-Up

• You provide time for writing, the first fundamental condition. (time)
• Your students write about what they know. (choice)
• When you write with your students, you show them what writing is for. (demonstration)
• You set high expectations for each writer. (expectation)
• The conditions in your classroom are highly predictable. (evaluation) (67)

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From "All Children Can Write" (1985)

I am often asked, "What are the essentials to strong writing programs?" Although the list could be extensive, I think that if teachers understand the following four components, their writing programs will serve the children well. These components are adequate provision of time, child choice of topic, responsive teaching, and the establishment of a classroom community, a community that has learned to help itself.

1. Time
2. Topic Choice
3. Response

• People write to share, whether with themselves or others. Writers need audiences to respond to their messages. The response confirms for the writer that the text fits his/her intentions. First, the teacher provides an active audience for the writer by confirming what he/she understands in the text and then by asking a few clarifying questions. Second, the teacher helps the entire class to learn the same procedure during group share time.

4. Community of Learners

• Writing is a social act. If social actions are to work, then the establishment of a community is essential. A highly predictable classroom is required if children are to learn to take responsibility and become a community of learners who help each other. Writing is an unpredictable act requiring predictable classrooms both in structure and response.
• The writing classroom is a structured, predictable room in which children learn to make decisions. The external structure is geared to produce a confident, internal thinking framework within which children learn what they know and develop their own Initiative.