What causes students to stare at a blank page?

As I have engaged in the Edina Public Schools Writing Cohort for the past two years, I know there are various reasons why students don't like to write.  Some students don't know what to write about while others have a difficult time with the physical act of writing.  In the past, I have offered suggestions to students and parents to write about topics that they love.  We have created heart maps and writing history brochures so students have an array of topics to choose from.  I have also encouraged struggling writers to record their thoughts with a tape recorder before writing them down so that they are able to have a starting point for retrieving the content that they have going through their minds. 

But up until this year, I never considered the idea that the inability to spell could be a major stumbling block for many of our students.  How do I know this to be the case?  I asked them.  After watching a small handful of students stare at a blank page for the first couple weeks in my new classroom, I wondered if it was developmental.  Could it just be that a 3rd grader wasn't prepared for higher expectations?  It was possible.  However, I wasn't just seeing this with my 3rd graders.  I was observing it with a couple of my 4th graders too.  So I spoke to each of these students individuallly to try to understand why it was so challenging to get their thoughts down on paper.  Each one said they didn't know how to spell the words that they wanted to write, and they worried that they would get in trouble for not spelling the words correctly.  I assured them that my main concern was that they were able to get their thoughts down on paper.  The thinking behind it was most important to me, rather than correct grammar and spelling.  Those things can always be fixed, I told them, but the content was the one thing that mattered most. 

I have noticed that the blank pages exist less often now.  However, there are times when I will ask a student to read me what he/she has written, that child has a difficult time reading it because they don't know what words they were trying to spell in their writing.  I've also noticed that some students don't take the time to think about how to spell a word correctly, and they want a quick answer from me.  My reply is always, "How do you think you spell it?"  95% of the time, the student will spell the word correctly for me.  This tells me that not only do students need to be encouraged to take their time to think about how to spell a word, but they also need to be told they are capable of doing it themselves.  Building confidence in a student is essential to his/her success as a learner, and it's my job to explore the best ways to do this.

This is just the beginning of my investigations, and if anyone has ideas or thoughts they'd like to share, please do.  My main goal in creating this blog is to become a better teacher of spelling for all of my students, and I strongly believe that collaboration is one of the best ways to learn.  So please...if you have a thought to share, no matter how brief or lengthy, join me as a fellow spelling sleuth as I try to determine strategies that will best meet the needs of my varied learners.