Chapter 10

Atwell speaks of taking off the "top of your head" as a teacher. Invite the students into your personal archives of writing. Allow the student to learn from your mistakes. A student should not be expected to naturally understand how to be great writers. Atwell makes students take notice of mistakes in their writing or her writing, as to make them understand that they must be able to identisfy features of writing as well as the mistakes that we all make. Atwell mentions writing bad on purpose in order to sharpen students' skills as writers and readers. Most impressively, Atwell does not use bad examples of student writing in class. Manny times, students will become discouraged as teachers do this. Though many times teachers hide the names on a bad paper, you can still see the writer squirm as the teacher deconstructs their paper. Students should write things that come naturally to them. If students write naturally the brainstorming process as well as the weriting process will come together because the student wants to talk about the subject matter. As Atwell says, "I had to write pages like this (in regards to a corrected draft) before I got it out of my system- to write badly as a prelude to, perhaps, writing well." The same goes for students, so writing is the only way to get better as a writer.