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Two hundred area educators had the opportunity to met Ralph Fletcher on Thursday, May 24, 2007 at St. John Fisher College. During this day long conference, Ralph presented the thinking embodied in his newest book, Boy Writers, Reclaiming Their Voices. With many samples of student writing Ralph illustrated the need for teachers to set kids free from the formula writing for “test prep.”
Boys, more than girls, take an enormous risk when writing in school. There is no choice, their humor and interests aren’t appreciated, their literacy practices (comic books, video games and IM’ing) are devalued and all writing must flow through the teacher’s perception of writing process using her format.
To create boy-friendly classrooms, Ralph mentioned some basic components:
• Real choice about what to write and how to write it
• More acceptance of reasonable violence (murder, mayhem and dismemberment) and quirky humor (farts)
• Room for “boy” genres – sports, spoofs and parodies, fantasy, comics, graphic novels
• Opportunities to draw while composing as an element of the composition
• Cooperative writing and peer review so writing is more social than solitary
• Allowance for messy handwriting as a developmental issue for boys – allow keyboarding
Other elements necessary for writing classrooms appear less gender specific. Teachers need to get students excited about and engaged with writing first; quality comes later. Teachers need to provide specific praise during conferencing and focus on strengths. Teachers also need to be aware that they sometimes censor what they “praise” or allow students to share; the realistic, sincere writing of girls is often publicly admired while the satirical writing of boys is often shunned.
A small amount of time was spent discussing Craft Lessons, Ralph’s earlier books, and Teaching the Qualities of Writing, a curriculum he created with wife JoAnn Portalupi. He did spent some time discussing the importance of writer’s notebook and its place in the classroom and life for all writers. Three resources for teachers would be Lessons for the Writer's Notebook by Ralph Fletcher & JoAnn Portalupi (Heinemann), A Writer's Notebook
by Ralph Fletcher (Avon Books) and Breathing In, Breathing Out - Keeping a Writer's Notebook by Ralph Fletcher (Heinemann). There are additional helpful comments at Ralph’s website.
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