"The teacher's greatest challenge is working with reluctant writers," Paul Higbee told his audience during
his 8:30 am presentation. He offered a strategy for getting the "I don't know what to write" student to
get started on college essays.
Higbee asks students to write "the 30 most compelling words" you can
devise to lead into a piece of writing, in this case, the college entrance essay.
Students are asked to write the lead for three separate essay topics, and then put them away for a couple weeks.
Higbee urges his students to keep thinking about what they could say to develop that
essay from the lead they have already written. Two weeks later, students pull those leads up again and decide which
one essay they are going to finish writing. Higbee said that good writing comes from
this method of pre-writing the college essay.
Higbee also urged us to have our students submit writing to Prairie
Winds because it was established to provide an audience for South Dakota writers.
In connection with his Prairie Winds suggestion, Higbee also suggested establishing a school writing club which would
meet every two weeks to read aloud what you are writing to get feedback from other writers.
Teachers could establish such a club as an "extra-curricular" activity for student writers, the natural outgrowth of
which would be submissions to Prairie Winds.
NOTE: Writing can be submitted to Prairie Winds at any time
throughout the year. The deadline for the fall issue is May 15. Send
submissions to: Prairie Winds, 208 E. Colorado Boulevard, Spearfish, SD 57783