Some of the best advice you can give student writers is also some of the easiest for them to carry through on: to write better, they should read better.

Read better, as in: Read more. Read widely. Read outside their usual reading “type.” Read carefully. Read for fun.

Read first for story, and then read as backseat writers.

I’ll warn you that there is a risk in “backseat writing,” in second-guessing the author’s decisions without first allowing ourselves to savor their story. If we read only to analyze every decision the author made, it can strip all the pleasure out of the reading experience. So I encourage students to put the story first, simply asking themselves if the book worked for them on the most elementary level: did the act of reading it bring them a payoff of some kind? Did reading the book give them an adrenaline rush or warm fuzzy feelings or make them cry or fall in love? Did it cause them to examine their world in a whole new way, or illuminate something about their life?

If the answer to any of those questions is yes, then after savoring for a while, I challenge them to think as a backseat writer. What tricks do they think the author used to accomplish those reactions? Are they tricks they could try in their own writing? How would the story be different if the writer had made different choices? Changed point of view? Used a different setting? Given the character a different motivation? Pointed the plot in a different direction?

It’s that time of year when “best of the year” booklists and children’s and young adult book awards are dissected and debated and detailed on blogs far and wide. In other words, it’s the perfect time to easily steer your young writers towards a whole year full of great reading. Ask them to pick up books—any good books will do—and then read them like backseat writers.

Before they know it, they’ll be teaching themselves how to drive.

Traffic signals don’t require a single word to send a clear message.  Even small children can learn how to “read” them. Red reads “stop.” Green reads “go.” Yellow reads either “slow down” or “speed up,” depending on the “character” of the driver.

Even young students can also “read” wordless picture books. Because the artwork reveals its own narrative, young readers can follow the action, interpret the characters’ motivations, predict outcomes, and intuit the mood and emotions of the story.

I take things a step further by using wordless picture books as the foundation for a student story-writing activity. I ask students to choose the wordless book they want to work with (or you can project one book one-spread-at-a-time to the entire classroom). Then I ask them to write the story that they believe belongs with the artwork. It’s an excellent way to teach young writers about story structure: the illustrations provide this in ready-made fashion; the artwork serves as a container within which a story already exists. But within that existing container, students have a great deal of creative freedom to tell the story in their own way. It’s always a delight to see how different student tell such different stories even when they all started with the same series of illustrations.

This activity works well for tentative writers, who are helped over the tremendous hurdle of having to start from scratch. They often stick with a fairly direct recitation of what is happening in the illustrations, but still internalize the story’s structure as they work their way cover to cover.

But the activity also works well for more confident writers, who I find use the artwork as a jumping-off point for creative flights of fantasy.

There are many good wordless picture books out there; you can search out a variety to appeal to a variety of students, or to allow you to repeat the activity several different times. One that I’ve found works well is Bill Thomson’s Chalk. Let me know if you have suggestions of your own.

I’ve found wordless picture books prove to be “green for go” as writing tools for students of all ages!

It wasn’t so unusual that my teenage nephews were sending me signals that translated to: “Will you take us to the store right now so we can spend these Christmas gift cards from Grandma?”

What was new this year was that they also wanted to do the driving. Brand-new permits in their pockets, I agreed to let one twin drive us there, and the other drive us home. And one of the things that most struck me was how careful they were to use their turn signals, even with no other cars for seemingly miles around.

It made me realize that as a seasoned driver I am sometimes a little lax about using my blinker—but that signaling one’s intentions is a really good habit to develop in student writers as well as in student drivers.

When kicking off a story, or titling it, sending the reader a signal about what to expect promises them a payoff. For example: “Hey, reader, do you love fantasy? Do you see how in Chapter One I’ve snuck in this bizarre detail? It’s a little hint that the world of this book is going to hold a lot more surprises than the everyday ‘real’ world that you’re used to.”

Foreshadowing is another effective use of signaling: a shadow (metaphorical or not) falling across the character’s sunny day can send a little shiver down the spine of a reader as they anticipate that as-yet-unidentified trouble is coming.

And when I review the work of writers at all stages and ages, one of the most common things I see is that there are obvious holes in the information presented to the reader. Not intentional holes, meant to build tension. But unintentional holes, because the writer has things clear in their own head and doesn’t see that the reader isn’t being told enough. This is why peer review can be so valuable a part of your classroom’s writing process. You don’t even need to ask students to offer each other full-fledged critiques; simply encourage them to ask each other questions about their stories, and to point out where they are confused in their reading. These are great signals to the writer about where they might have unintentionally left holes in their story.

Flipping that blinker on is so easy—I find myself doing it much more often now that I’ve seen the student drivers in action.