A successful way to challenge students to become more independent writers is to task yourself as a listener. Help students learn what ideas and things in and about their lives are special to them. Encourage them to make discoveries and connections with those things in their writing.
Students who are always supplied with outside ideas and are never creatively or critically challenged will have no base to draw from when they write. Good writing will never be the product of constant welfare and dependence. Rescue Writing encourages children to learn their own writing motivations and directions by learning more about themselves and making connections with what they love in their world.
Lucy Calkins, a child literacy researcher and expert says, “Children who are fed topics, story starters, lead sentences… as a steady diet… rightfully panic when topics have to come to them. When teacher’s dole out topics, children become dependent on them.” This quote from her book Lessons from a Child encourages children to grow into self-reliant writers.
