"I am" Poems and Beliefs About the Teaching of Writing

Everyone has the capacity to write, writing can be taught, and teachers can help students become better writers.

-NCTE Beliefs about the Teaching of Writing, November 2004


To better study writing strategy use in context, literacy development researchers suggest incorporating strategies that are analyzed in reference to students' goals for learning (Cumming, Busch, & Zhou, 2002; Hyland, 2003). Since I strive to adapt teaching and learning events to meet the needs of my students, lessons are rarely planned more than a week in advance, but they are designed around research-based learning theories that aim to support students in developing a positive self-concept as writers.

The week before last, I had the pleasure of spending two days in a high school English class as a guest teacher/ substitute. I observed a variety of student achievement artifacts to include poetry, artwork, and copies of college acceptance letters plastered all over the classroom walls for all eyes to see and admire. One such display of work I took a liking to was an I am poetry project. Using various sentence starters, the students had created poems about themselves that represented their personal histories, hopes, dreams and self-perceptions.

I copied down the sentence starters and typed them up to give to my workshop students. I wanted to see how well they liked using these self-reflective sentence starters as a warm-up writing practice. The results were positive. For the remaining hour, the kids thought about, and shared their ideas as they were writing. We finished with the students reading their pieces in front of the group in an author's chair format. From this project, I felt as though I had learned so much more about my students as individuals in just one hour.

According to the late Donald Murray, professional authors spend seventy-five percent of their time in rehearsal for writing by observing life, gathering ideas and thinking about the written word before beginning a rough draft (Murray, 1989). Incorporating practices that are accessible for all learners are essential ingredients for a successful writing event because it allows writers to feel a sense of ownership over their work and feel accomplished at any stage of writing. This poetry project, that came about through my own observation, reflection and research, has proven to me that students are generally motivated to write when they are an expert in their topic. The workshop members unanimously agreed that they wanted to see this project through in publication form. Tomorrow we will discuss the possibilities of printed book or digital story publication forms.

I am...


I am

My mother would describe me as

My friends call me

I remember

I've learned

I hide

I read

I shout

I am

I see

I hear

I taste

I feel

I think

I whisper

I am

I want

I will

I won't

I can

I pretend

I sing

I am

I dream

I'm afraid

I reach

I say

I love

I believe

I am