Writing ideas thread

[ikesmom]

I saw a book available as an e-book from our library website. I tried to copy and paste a few parts , but it wouldn't work.

The book is called Teaching Writing in the Content Areas
I thought I would post on a few key points since many of us have a struggle with writing.


dialog- talking about prewriting ideas- gives purpose and clarifies what they know.

Inquiry- asking questions..gets us thinking

talking- building on each others ideas and repeating them back to each other

organizers/brainstorming/making lists-


Free writing- which is talking written down-if this is too hard maybe start with a topic sentence


When we learned about how to write a paragraph we used the hamburger chart http://www.superteacherworksheets.co...er-writing.pdf

I really liked Core Knowledge paragraph writing lesson

http://www.coreknowledge.org/mimik/m...%20Writing.pdf

Anyone care to add ideas? Tips? What your doing?

[elizawill]

last year, we really enjoyed peggy kaye's games for writing. it's a great book & my daughter really enjoyed it.

for other writing ideas, we used to do this (my daughter isn't a natural writer though, so this helped break the process down into baby steps):

day 1: write several topics that interest you on a piece of paper (this could range from butterflies to nick jonas). these were not sentences & it wasn't organized neatly. it was just random words all over a piece of paper.

day 2: choose 1 of the topics from day 1. make a list of 5-10 things you know about that topic (use books and the internet if desired for research). again, these were just words thrown on a piece of paper.

day 3: write 3 sentence about your topic using the information from day 2 (spelling and punctuation did not matter).

day 4: re-write the sentence neatly & with proper punctuation.

anyway...as she felt more comfortable with this, she learned to be more descriptive in her sentences and engaging for the reader. she enjoyed this process too & was able to write a paragraph by the end of the year.

this year, we just use writing with ease, and for creative writing, we are really enjoying writing strands.

[khenn]

I use the Bravewriter approach to writing which you can find at www.bravewriter.com .

The program is more of a lifestyle than a curriculum and focuses on teaching the writer...not the writing. So, lots of dialogue before wriitng is encouraged, engaging your children in debates is helpful, and just getting them to think.

Writing starts with freewriting as the purpose of writing is to get what is in the writer's mind into the reader's mind and do it effectively. This takes practice but also takes not worrying about the mechanics up front.

I teach in a co op setting and my students freewrite, then they revise, and then they edit. In the revision stage, I take what they have written -- with all of the run on sentences, fragments, punctuation and capitolization problems -- and I praise them for the content and for the uniqueness in what they wrote and how they expressed themselves. I then ask them questions as usually I am not up to speed on their types of topics anyway so it's quite easy. By asking questions, I'm just getting them to tell me more.

Once we are done revising, we edit. If it's a report...it's time to group the ideas into paragraph form. If it's a story, we still break out the paragraphs, fix the sentences, work on sentence length variety, work on an opening hook, and the closing and so on. After the content is there...we worry about these nitty gritty details that pull it all together.

I love writing. I love teaching writing. I find it to be so much fun to get the best out of the kids and to read what they have to say in life.

[annettemarie]

We're working through Gail Carson Levine's Writing Magic book.