“Human beings have a deep need to represent their experience through writing… we write because we want to understand our lives.” This quote from The Art of Teaching Writing by children’s literature expert Lucy Calkins describes how to empower children to write.
Children write to understand their chaos, but it isn’t enough. They want to be represented and understood by an audience. Sharing their writing is just as important at the practice of writing. When children read their peers writing as literature it leads to the feeling of authorship and understanding.
Calkins says sharing starts at the beginning and continues throughout the writing process because “it is only through musing, drafting, revising, talking, and musing some more that most writers know what they want to say.”
