When students entered my history class at the beginning of the school year, they did not want to write. Writing was agonizing and found themselves full of doubt. Who could blame them? Writing is hard! I know I could relate to their feelings about writing. I liked learning about history, but when it came to writing about it, I wanted to avoid it like the plague.

What got my students (and myself) over the hurdle? Practice and breaking down the writing process into smaller chunks to make it not so scary.

Be a better writer in school

Writing can be a struggle. Feelings of not sure what to write about or how to write it. Words don’t come to mind. Or we aren’t able to transfer the ideas from our head to paper.

When we dread having to write, we often jump in head first, hope for the best, and can’t wait to get to the end. However, this is not the way to go and will only set us up for frustration down the road. (Your future self will not be happy. 😒)

Before we even type or write down that first word, we need to think about the topic. We have to understand what the topic is, what should be included, and how to go about it. We need to understand the question or writing prompt. 

How do we do this? Break down the question into steps. These steps allow us to more clearly understand what to write about and how to go about it. Learn about these steps below!