Tend Your Garden offers an original and adaptable classroom model,
built on a foundation of educational research, for motivating young
adolescent writers. The Young Adolescent Motivation Model of Writing
(YAMM) places the young adolescent learner, aged 11-14, at its center,
surrounded by the components needed to motivate the learner to high
levels of academic composition or creative writing. The components of
the model are: teaching to the whole child; developing a writing
community; presenting motivating, high-interest lessons; integrating
process writing across the curriculum; offering choice and critical
thinking; building upon each writer's strengths; and using authentic
assessment. Each component is revealed within succeeding chapters that
blend best practice pedagogy with related theory. Sample lessons that
fit the needs and engagement levels of young adolescent writers are
provided, representing a wide array of writing genres and content area
subjects.
The YAMM model and the illustrative lessons build upon a background of
motivation theory, authentic inquiry, and multi-modal responses.
Literature, drama, music, drawing, and painting are offered both as
invitations to writing and as responses to writing, and these are
applied within a process-based, workshop format, with teacher modeling
of each stage of the writing process. The approach recognizes motivation
that is tied to the needs of young adolescent writers and that places
responsibility on students in their development as writers and learners,
while the teacher assumes a facilitative and supportive role of
discovering the strengths, interests, and literacy needs of each
student. The holistic, learner-centered process approach represented by
the YAMM model nurtures students' motivation for achieving success in
writing because it necessitates evolving, facilitative roles for the
teacher in a collaborative writing community decidedly focused on the
success of all young adolescent writers. A primary purpose for writing
the text is to identify and describe the characteristic needs of young
adolescents, and what these needs imply for those student writers, to
the key adults in their lives--teachers, school officials, and
parents--who undoubtedly support these young people's achievements.
The author selects and weaves thirty years of classroom teaching
experiences into each chapter, highlighting memorable moments with her
students and inserting her own reflections and inspirations of learning
to write along with her students. Teachers who read Tend Your Garden
are likely to find points of commonality with the author and enjoy
reliving their own moments as teachers and as students, as they gain new
insights about their students and about the approaches that are
effective with young adolescent writers.
