I sincerely apologize for not posting yesterday. I know you all cling to my every word...well, maybe not! Steven and I had a late night of putting together a new day bed for Little Miss and moving the crib to the baby's room.
Last week I talked about getting your child to journal. Journaling is a great starting point for kids who are overwhelmed by the thought of a writing project. After your child has been writing in their journal for a while, encouarge them to write about things that are intimate or personal to them. In public school, I used to tell my students if they had a journal entry they wanted to keep private, they could write "DO NOT READ" across the top. I promised them I would keep their wishes. I never read those entries. Not only would it betray their trust, but it would also discourage them from writing about personal topics. This is a great way to encourage children to write on a deeper level.
Hopefully, after a month or so of journal writing you are beginning to see an increase of meaningful words on a page, and are able to introduce the idea of the Writing Process. The Writing Process is usually broken down into five parts: Brainstorming, Prewriting, Revising, Editing, and Publishing. It is imperative that you stay focused on what part of the process you are teaching, and stick with it. Don't go dipping into one of the other parts...especially editing!
In the first step of the Writing Process you are only asking kids to brainstorm what they want to write about. When doing a writing project for my classes in public school, I always chose the genre of writing and basic topic. Usually, our first project was in the month of October. The kids were amped up about Halloween so we did personal narratives on a time they felt scared.
Brainstorming was simple for this genre. The students were to make a list in their journals of any time they remember feeling scared. Of course you have some knucklehead who says, "I've never been scared before." Then I make it my life goal to hide out in class only to jump out and scare the heebee-jeebies out of them. Kidding, but I do spend a few minutes talking to them. Often times the child just feels their 'scared' moment isn't scary enough. It's good to reassure them that you can write the experience very scary, only to find out in the end everything was just fine.
After the kids have their running list of scared moments, they rank their Top 3 'I Almost Peed My Pants' Moments, close their journals, and move on to something else. This usually leaves their jaws hanging and their hamster wheels spinning. We're done? How can we be done?
I absolutely love this part of the process. Kids are so used to these long and lengthy writing projects. When they're told to close their journals after little writing (and no checking of spelling and grammar, they're perplexed). Thankfully, this leaves them with the feeling that writing doesn't drag out forever, even though in the end, it will take at least three weeks to a month to get to the publishing stage. Yes, you read that right...three weeks to a month. Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither should kids' stories. It takes time to develop beauty.
On the next addition of "Getting Kids to Write", I'll talk about the following two steps: Prewriting & Revising. This is where it gets good!
1 comment:
Zack had to write something about the beginning of school and all he wrote about was sleep and Taco Bueno!! He said taht I (a mother of a toddler), slept ALL the time! Lying in his writing. Boys! I really like your "teaching" posts.
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