Tend your Garden; Nurturing Motivation in Young Adolescent Writers; Mary Anna Kruch

Mary Anna Kruch [+–]

Freelance Writer

Mary Anna Kruch (BA, MA & PhD Michigan State University) is a full-time writer, having taught young adolescents for thirty years. Following retirement from classroom teaching and literacy coaching, she was an Assistant Professor at Grand Valley State University, where she taught writing, children’s literature, and literacy methods classes to pre-service teachers. Kruch is a former officer in the Michigan Council of Teachers of English and an active fellow in the Red Cedar Writing Project, affiliated with the National Writing Project, at Michigan State University. Kruch has also facilitated a long-standing writing group as well as advanced institutes for teacher consultants.

Tend Your Garden offers an original and adaptable classroom model, built on a foundation of educational research, for motivating young adolescent writers. The Young Adolescent Motivation Model of Writing (YAMM) places the young adolescent learner, aged 11-14, at its center, surrounded by the components needed to motivate the learner to high levels of academic composition or creative writing. The components of the model are: teaching to the whole child; developing a writing community; presenting motivating, high-interest lessons; integrating process writing across the curriculum; offering choice and critical thinking; building upon each writer’s strengths; and using authentic assessment. Each component is revealed within succeeding chapters that blend best practice pedagogy with related theory. Sample lessons that fit the needs and engagement levels of young adolescent writers are provided, representing a wide array of writing genres and content area subjects.

The YAMM model and the illustrative lessons build upon a background of motivation theory, authentic inquiry, and multi-modal responses. Literature, drama, music, drawing, and painting are offered both as invitations to writing and as responses to writing, and these are applied within a process-based, workshop format, with teacher modeling of each stage of the writing process. The approach recognizes motivation that is tied to the needs of young adolescent writers and that places responsibility on students in their development as writers and learners, while the teacher assumes a facilitative and supportive role of discovering the strengths, interests, and literacy needs of each student. The holistic, learner-centered process approach represented by the YAMM model nurtures students’ motivation for achieving success in writing because it necessitates evolving, facilitative roles for the teacher in a collaborative writing community decidedly focused on the success of all young adolescent writers. A primary purpose for writing the text is to identify and describe the characteristic needs of young adolescents, and what these needs imply for those student writers, to the key adults in their lives—teachers, school officials, and parents—who undoubtedly support these young people’s achievements.

The author selects and weaves thirty years of classroom teaching experiences into each chapter, highlighting memorable moments with her students and inserting her own reflections and inspirations of learning to write along with her students. Teachers who read Tend Your Garden are likely to find points of commonality with the author and enjoy reliving their own moments as teachers and as students, as they gain new insights about their students and about the approaches that are effective with young adolescent writers.

Series: Frameworks for Writing

Prelims

Dedication v – xiv

Forward by Kia Jane Richmond [+–] xv – xviii

Foreword

Editor’s Preface xix – xxii

Preface xxiii – xxv

Introduction

Introduction: How I Came to Tender My Garden [+–] 1 – 18

Introduction

Nurturing the Whole Learner in an Inquiry-Rich Environment [+–] 19 – 50

I present a sample unit that directly addresses learners’ needs and nurtures their motivation to write, and I argue for teaching young emotional needs – and plans for students’ active involvement and future success – all of which are keys to motivating writing. I present a sample unit that directly addresses learners’ needs and nurtures their motivation to write, and I argue for teaching young adolescent writers by means of a progressive, learner-centered approach to best nurture their writing growth. Finally, I review national writing initiatives in support of a traditional, more strictly curriculum-centered approach and point out the mismatch in its use with young adolescent writers.

Cultivating a Writing Community [+–] 51 – 82

In this chapter, I present an argument for building and nurturing an interdependent writing community of learners who engage in meaningful writing activities within a workshop-based process approach.

Engaging Young Writers with Relevant, High-Interest Lessons [+–] 83 – 134

In this chapter, I present and argument for develop of intrinsic motivation, allowing for the realistic time and effort necessary for planting and sowing the concept with students, along with the extrinsic motivation that can be found in schools.

Growing Process Writing Linked to the Arts [+–] 135 – 184

Here I propose that inquiry-based learning can motivate young adolescent writers when the arts are introduced into classroom lessons.

Motivating Writing with Choice and Critical Thinking [+–] 185 – 235

In this chapter, I offer my perceptions of the term criticism with respect to young adolescent writing. I refer to two C s, critical thinking and choice , and I discuss their relationship to motivating young adolescent writers.

Learner-Centered Writing in an e-Universe [+–] 237 – 277

In this chapter, I address the issues involved in teaching writing in an electronic age, including discussion of: how young adolescents view their writing, future growth and vision in digital writing instruction, steps that teachers may take to motivate and assist developing writers, the importance of collegial interaction and support for writing teachers, and experts’ projected technological trends for schools.

Sowing the Seeds of Formative, Authentic Assessment [+–] 279 – 324

In this chapter, I argue for the use of a varied set of teacher-selected, formative assessments, along with the more standard, summative writing assessments (“writing on demand”), in order to best measure young adolescent writing.

Maxim-izing Motivation via Teacher Imagination [+–] 325 – 351

The final chapter concerns itself with maxims and teachers’vision and power.

References

References 353 – 369

Appendices

Appendix A: Books with Strong, Positive, Global Characters [+–] 371 – 373

Appendix A

Appendix B: Suggested Resources for “War” Theme [+–] 374 – 376

Appendix B

Appendix C: ADVERB (gray) Activity Cards for “You Be the Sentence” Lesson [+–] 377 – 377

Appendix C

Appendix D: SUBJECT (pink) Activity Cards for “You Be the Sentence” Lesson [+–] 378 – 378

Appendix D

Appendix E: VERB (blue) Activity Cards for “You Be the Sentence” Lesson [+–] 379 – 379

Appendix E

Appendix F: ADJECTIVE (green) Activity Cards for “You Be the Sentence” Lesson [+–] 380 – 380

Appendix F

Appendix G: PHRASE (red) Activity Cards for “You Be the Sentence” Lesson [+–] 381 – 382

Appendix G

Index

Author Index [+–] 383 – 388

author index

Subject Index [+–] 389 – 395

Subject index

Reviews

In Tend Your Garden: Nurturing Motivation in Young Adolescent Writers, Mary Anna Kruch offers “specific ways to motivate young adolescents to write in and out of the classroom…ground[ed] in constructivist and sociocultural theory, as well as holistic education and motivational theory….” Kruch views young adolescent writers as active, thoughtful makers of meaning, and invites their teachers to consider themselves as co-learners with their students. The author of Tend Your Garden shares instructional techniques, lesson plan templates, and examples of writing that will help instructors to meet these goals…. Kruch’s textbook includes personal anecdotes about her thirty-year career as a middle school instructor and well-tested strategies that motivate young adolescents and invite them into the study of writing as a process. Kruch’s references to tenets from the National Writing Project as well as those by the National Council of Teachers of English successfully contextualize her arguments about writing instruction and help readers to value their own experiences as writers while considering current academic conversations about how writing should be taught…. My hope is that through reading this textbook, English educators and future writing teachers will become more invested in creating lessons that reinforce the joy of teaching young adolescent writers as critical thinkers, creative beings, and active citizens of the global community.
From the Forward by Kia Jane Richmond, Associate Professor of English, Secondary Education, Northern Michigan University

x

Books and Journals in Humanities, Social Science and Performing Arts

Tend your Garden

Nurturing Motivation in Young Adolescent Writers

Mary Anna Kruch [+–]

Freelance Writer

Table of Contents

Reviews

Related Journal

Related Interest

Search Equinox

Subjects