by Sylvia M. Vardell, May 2021

One of the things we have all observed in working with students in virtual settings is how much we all long for connection. We wish we could connect in person, students wish they could connect with friends, and all of us wish we could connect with our familiar places—schools, classrooms, and libraries. It's even more important to make connections in our teaching and learning. It's important to demonstrate to students that their learning can have a genuine impact on their lives and the world around them. It's important for students to share their work with each other and with people outside their usual circle. How do we do all that? By seeking out as many authentic audiences and practical purposes for their learning as humanly possible as often as possible. And, librarians are very good at researching solutions for issues just like this.

Across the Curriculum

When we survey the subjects across the curriculum, it's possible to find authentic audiences and purposes in every area. For example, in science, there are many citizen science projects that invite "regular" people, including children and young adults, to participate in projects that have real-world value. For example, at https://www.citizenscience.gov there are hundreds of ongoing projects recruiting volunteers to gather and crowdsource data. As librarians, we can be the go-between in talking with teachers about their curricular focus and finding a matching project. Yasmin B. Kafai (2012) writes about middle school students who designed, debugged, and submitted their own original video games in a national STEM video game challenge. Participating in an online competition provided big incentives, a real-world purpose, and an authentic audience. Or in social studies, we can look for ways to help students actively learn about local government, the variety of cultures within their communities, or participating in social activism. For example, Lindsay Yearta (2019) writes about fourth graders doing research on the Revolutionary War and then gathering images, writing scripts, and recording narrations to create digital stories that were then uploaded to a video-sharing website to be viewed by all.

In the area of reading and the language arts there are many, many options for providing authentic audiences for student work. Many educators have had fun working with students to create digital book trailers, sharing them online via social media and on school and library websites. What a great way to have students motivate their peers to read while building their own comprehension and technology skills. We can use a wide variety of apps and tools to promote digital storytelling, share student voices, and learn from one another as we listen to and engage with others. Matthew Duvall and Brian Smith (2017) used Goodreads to motivate high school students to read and respond to their own reading and to connect with other readers—of all ages. When it comes to motivating student writers, authentic audiences are particularly important and there are so many ways to provide a real purpose for young writers: writing letters to the editor, consumer complaints, social media posts, greeting cards, how-to directions, and more. Whether students are writing expository text like these or sharing personal narratives, fiction, or poetry, motivation is high when students know their writing will be read and enjoyed by a real audience.

Publishing Student Writing

Here are a variety of print and online sources that publish work by young writers—from fiction to nonfiction to jokes and riddles to poetry. Be sure to check the rules and specifications for submitting to each venue. Help students learn how to submit their writing for publication and prepare them for the possibility of acceptance or rejection (and then resubmission). For some aspiring writers, seeing their names "in print" may be the beginning of a lifelong passion or a future career.

Creative Kids (ages 8-16) — http://www.ckmagazine.org

"This is the nation's largest magazine for and by kids."

Carus Publishing: Cicada, Cobblestone, Faces, Dig, Muse (ages 9-14+) — http://www.cobblestonepub.com/index.html

You'll find magazines on topics from nature to history and more.

New Moon: The Magazine for Girls and Their Dreams (ages 8-14) — http://www.newmoon.com/

Here is a special online community and magazine for girls.

Skipping Stones (all ages) — http://www.skippingstones.org

This is an international, multicultural, environmental magazine.

Stone Soup (ages 8-13) — http://stonesoup.com

Look for stories, poems, book reviews, and artwork by young people.

The Telling Room (ages 6-18) — http://www.tellingroom.org/stories

Stories published online as well as annual anthologies and chapbooks.

Canvas (ages 8-13) — http://canvasliteraryjournal.com

Canvas is published in print, eBook, Web, video, and audio formats.

Books of Student Writing

Be sure to seek out local opportunities to contribute to literary magazines, enter writing competitions, and create personal 'zines and more. The more students can see the impact of their writing, the more motivating it is to work through the writing process. There are also published books that collect writing by young people and can be a source of inspiration and modeling. Here are just a few titles as examples:

Aguado, Bill, ed. Paint Me Like I Am. Harper, 2003.

Raw and honest poems explore identity, creativity, and relationships

Franco, Betsy, ed. Things I Have to Tell You: Poems and Writing by Teenage Girls. Candlewick, 2001.

Teen girls offer prose and poems about sexuality, identity, fears, dreams, and angst

Franco, Betsy, ed. You Hear Me? Poems and Writing by Teenage Boys. Candlewick, 2001.

Prose and poetry by teen boys explore angry and honest emotions and experiences

Franco, Betsy, ed. Falling Hard: 100 Love Poems by Teenagers. Candlewick, 2008.

Honest poems about love by teens from many different backgrounds and sexual orientations

Haiti My Country: Poems by Haitian Schoolchildren. Illustrated by Rogé. Fifth House, 2014.

Close-up painted portraits of real kids in Haiti accompany their brief personal character sketches.

Johnson, Dave, ed. Movin': Teen Poets Take Voice. Orchard, 2000.

Teens write about real life in poetic and evocative language

Lowe, Ayana, ed. Come and Play: Children of Our World Having Fun. Bloomsbury, 2008.

Photos of children around the world along with poems by young writers, ages 5-11.

Lyne, Sandford, ed. Soft Hay Will Catch You. Simon & Schuster, 2004.

A Kentucky poet gathers poems by young writers about home and family.

McLaughlin, Timothy, ed. Walking on Earth and Touching the Sky: Poetry and Prose by Lakota Youth at Red Cloud Indian School. Abrams, 2012.

Powerful prose blends with personal poetry by Lakota students at Red Cloud Indian School in South Dakota.

Nye, Naomi Shihab, ed. Salting the Ocean: 100 Poems by Young Poets. Greenwillow, 2000.

Nye collected "100 poems by 100 poets in grades one through twelve."

Simon, John O., ed. Cyclops Wearing Flip-Flops. Center for the Art of Translation, 2011.

Students in grades 3-8 respond to classic poems and write their own.

Spain, Sahara Sunday. If There Would Be No Light: Poems from My Heart. HarperCollins, 2001.

Dig into these poems by a nine-year-old who has traveled the world.

Stepanek, Mattie. Heartsongs. Hyperion, 2002.

This young writer shares feelings about living with illness and loss.

Tom, Karen, and Kiki. Angst! Teen Verses from the Edge. Workman, 2001.

Girls share edgy thoughts and frustrations.

WritersCorps. Tell the World. HarperCollins, 2008.

A cross-section of teen voices sharing slices of teenage life

Works Cited

Duvall, Matthew and Smith, Brian. "Authentic Audiences for Struggling Readers: A Case Study Using Goodreads in a High School Classroom." Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference, Waynesville, NC, 2017.

Kafai, Yasmin B. "What Makes Competitions Fun to Participate? The Role of Audience for Middle School Game Designers." IDC '12 Proceedings of the 11^th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (2012). https://doi.org/10.1145/2307096.2307146.

Yearta, Lindsay. "Integrating Social Studies and English Language Arts: Digital Stories and the Revolutionary War." The Reading Teacher 73, no. 2 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1806.