Recording to find your writer's voice

Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month

This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.

My seventh grade English students struggle a great deal with writing. Though most of my students are able to discuss ideas and opinions they have developed from their reading, they can commit little more than a few grammatically incorrect sentences to paper when asked to write about their reading. My students have a paralyzing fear of writing, and it is holding them back from developing their ideas and building their writing skills. With 30 students at a time in my classroom, it is logistically impossible to have individualized writing conferences with each student that allow me to hear their spoken thoughts and assist them in writing them out. I have read in several sources that when students are able to first tape record some of their thoughts, they can often transfer their ideas to paper and experience greater success in writing. The opportunity to hear that their ideas are valid helps diminish their writing fears, and it provides them a greater sense of ownership over their work. The majority of my students do not respond well to traditional reading and writing instruction because they are more auditory and visual learners. I think that providing my students with tape recorders could help them overcome their writing fears and further invest them in the writing process. In addition to using the recorders as general writing aids, we would do a unit on feature articles, during which students would interview subjects on their chosen topics. My students thrive on interactive activities like these, thus producing higher quality, more thoughtful projects. Finally, the tape recorders would hold my students accountable in their book club discussions. My students work in small groups, each reading the same book, and meeting twice/week to have book club discussions. Each group member is expected to bring thoughtful contributions to the discussion, based on their assigned role for the week (ex. Connector, Predictor, etc.) By having the students record their discussions, they would be able to periodically play a book club discussion back to help them analyze their conversational strengths and weaknesses and hear the progress that they make throughout their book clubs. My school does not have room in its budget for the tape recorders, so I am seeking your help in purchasing ten recorders to be shared among 90 students at a high-need, low-performing school in Spanish Harlem.