To cap off this month's blog posts, here is part 2 of the post on the National Book Week 2018 Essay Writing Contest where I continue sharing tips for writing coaches and mentors of students.
Here are my top five tips.
1. Know the rules. And consequently, ways of breaking them. When you follow rules to the book, where is room for creativity? In contests, contestants and participants can challenge the organisers and the status quo by showing a new insight, perspective or a way of doing things. It is a risk but one that is worth taking.
2. Know your purpose for joining in the contest and in coaching the student. Are you doing this to win or to teach and mentor? Which comes first, winning or mentoring? Your priority will define the future of your student and yours as well as teacher and mentor.
3. Do your research. Research on everything - past entries and winners of previous contests, issues relevant to the theme, new trends in writing styles and formats of contests.
4. Know your student, his or her skills, competencies and attitude towards the contest. It would help if you can also do a reading skills inventory with your student since reading and writing skills are sparing partners.
5. Know what essay to write and one that is applicable or suitable to the theme. A narrative and descriptive essay may be too personal and may miss out important points of the theme. A persuasive essay may need a lot of research. An opinion piece must show informed decisions that is well researched.
PLUS one more: Guide our student as he or she go through the writing process. Better if you and your student have designed a model of the writing process to follow.
Lastly, here are sources for teachers who are coaching mentoring students in their writing journey.
Teaching High School Students to Write - this is your toolkit for teaching, mentoring and coaching writing to high school students. The guide is produced and published by the Institute of Education Sciences (2016) and it has plenty of strategies and recommendations!
Time for Writing: The Essay - this is an online course for students and teachers who wish to attack learning writing as a process.
Becoming a Writing Coach - I am big believer of research-into-practice approach so here is a study on how teachers became better at teaching writing to middle school and high school students.
So, happy reading! Happy writing! It can be cognitive torture, but the benefits when the struggles are overcome are many and long term!
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