One of my favorite growing-up road trips was to see Christmas lights each year. Fortunately we only had to travel a few blocks from our home to find “Merry Christmas Circle,” a seasonally renamed street that featured light displays that drew tourist buses from hours away. So many visitors showed up that the out-of-the-way small-town street had to be converted into a one-way for the month of December, and traffic jams were a nightly occurrence.

My mom was friends with one of the participants, who talked about the friendly rivalry that grew up among that neighborhood’s households in a bid to showcase the biggest and best display. She said their family talked each year about letting go of the tradition—the electric bills alone were enough to make anyone think twice—but in the end, they didn’t want to let down (or be out-shown by) the neighbors. So instead, the displays only became more elaborate each year.

It’s certainly not a new psychological insight: we want to fit in with whomever it is we identify as our “group.” And it’s also secretly satisfying when we manage to outdo the guy next door.

I’d argue that you can use both of these truths to make your students’ writing “bigger and better.” I always build student-sharing time into my classroom writing sessions. When I first ask “Who would like to share their story/poem?,” I’m usually met with a couple of raised hands and a lot of shaking heads. But by the time they’ve watched one or two of their classmates share their work and then receive my corresponding praise and applause from the group, suddenly hands are shooting up all over the room.

And once students know that I’m going to ask some of them to share each day, they all work that much harder to write pieces that might outshine their classmates.

You might say they are “driven” to write better.