Helping Students to write independently

As I read over Routman Chapter 9, Conference with Students, I think of writing with my 2/3 graders at the beginning of the year. I can see that I took too much control of their editing and didn't give them a chance to work on their own stories. I think this comes from trying in vain to help my own children with their writing as they were older. I would be their editor. It would become a case of lots of marking through and rewriting, all in an effort to help them be better writers. I don't think I accomplished that! I can see parallels in our work on our own literary vignettes as students. By learning what it is to be a writer ourselves going through the stages of rough drafts, reading our work aloud in small groups and rewriting, we too can learn more than if we were told to write and then received our first attempts returned filled with red marks. Using whole group, small groups and peers to help with the process of writing, we help the student writer to feel more independent and competent. " Keep in mind that our goal is to have students monitor their own writing and problem solve independently so they can eventually draft, rewrite, revise, publish, and edit mostly on their own."(Routman, p.235) I can see more clearly reading Routman how to practice my responses to be more helpful, but to continue to place the editing responsibility back to the student.