Unschooling and writing--how does it happen? - Page 2

[cyclamen]

I am not currently an unschooling parent, but I was unschooled a bit as a teen.  I also worked as a writing tutor throughout college and graduate school.  I actually think I am just an adequate writer, but I've been told I am an excellent facilitator.  I  feel like facilitating is something that can fit very well with unschooling.  So, I hope you won't mind me thread crashing a little bit.

As a writing tutor, I was mostly a listener/reader and a reflector rather than an instructor.  I listened as a student would read his or her work aloud.  Students would catch things they meant to say but didn't, or find awkward places in their writing.  (A good line by line editing technique is to read the work backwards, from bottom to top, one sentence at a time.  But we usually began at the beginning.)  Then, I might say, "This part seems clear to me, but I want to check in - did you mean, blahblhabla?," and hear back, "Yes, that's what I meant," or "No, what I meant was," or "Well, partly, but what I think I'm really trying to say is...."  I might also say, "This part I was confused by.  Can you tell me more about what you mean?" 

This is almost always very fruitful for the student - many times I'd see them grab a pen and begin jotting stuff down.  For some students, who are really so deep into thinking aloud, I might jot down points as they were speaking so I could read them back.  A tape recorder can be really helpful for these types of sessions as well.  I might refer students to books - either literary or technical - that I felt they might find useful.  Occasionally, I might share a piece of information that it seems like they could really use.  Sometimes, if they were asking a question but it was clear to me they didn't have the vocabulary to ask the right question, I would name for them what they were asking.  "You seem to be asking about [concept]."  Dialogue.

Mostly, though it's a lot of asking questions - not leading questions, but questions of discovery, because each student is different and has different ways of learning.  Asking questions is the best way for me to learn about how the student learns, and gives the student the opportunity to think out loud.

-I don't know how to get started.

-Well, how do you do it right now?  What do you like about that way of beginning?  What doesn't work?  What do you need to know before you can start?  What can you do on the fly?  (Obviously not a barrage of questions.  Ask one.  Then wait. )   Often the student comes up with some testable solutions - things they can try doing. Sometimes I can share what works for me or what I know has worked for other students.

Other questions I might ask a student: how do you know when your work is done? 

-What was your goal with this writing project?  Do you feel that you met that goal?  Why or why not? 

-What do you think is the best way to organize this piece of writing?  Why?  What information needs to come first?  Why?  Who are you writing for and what do they need to know?

-Did you tell the story or make the argument you wanted to make?  Why or why not? 

-What was difficult and what was easy? 

-Where did things go wrong, and where did they go right?  What would you do the same next time?  Different? 

Each piece of writing is like an experiment, and doing a debrief afterwards can go a long way to developing better skills.   For younger writers, I would probably just ask one or two.  "What do you like about what you wrote?" and "What don't you like about what you wrote?"  And, "What would you do differently?"

Finally, I think just plain old reading can really help develop writing - a little wood for the fire, so to speak.  I suspect it's really normal for writing to lag behind reading because reading is a great wellspring for writing to bubble up from.  The very act of reading and struggling to understand develops our ability to think in more sophisticated ways, and it makes all the different kinds of grammar, rhetoric, and organization that others use familiar to us - puts that stuff into our toolbox, so to speak.  Then, when we go to write, if we've spent a lot of time reading (or talking!), we have a better sense of what sounds right, and makes sense.  Grammar becomes a bit intuitive.

Re: handwriting .... taking a touch type course in high school was the best thing that ever happened to me.... :)

This is a guide similar to one that I was given in my tutor training, and certain parts might be helpful, despite being geared to a college environment.  I mainly think the distinction between higher and lower order concerns is useful, especially for students who need a framework to help them prioritize.

http://www.winona.edu/writingcenter/05/Guide/guide2.htm

Edited by cyclamen - 11/25/11 at 7:19pm

[MissBright]

Many kids do far better with keyboarding than handwriting, and learn reading and writing much more easily using it. I have an online software program I adore and use with all my struggling readers and/or struggling writers. It's called Read, Write and Type. (disclaimer: I'm a distributor; I sell it at a much cheaper cost than its usual price at its site. If interested, contact me to save some bucks.) ;) 

The only reason I DO distribute it to parents is because I've used it for 15 years and never had a student who didn't benefit. It's even turned nonreaders into kids who can, all by itself, and the kids I teach love sending one another messages that they can easily type to one another in our safe online classroom. It's the ONLY product I recommend freely and openly. I'm not in sales! AT ALL. ;)

It's worked just as beautifully with my kids who weren't struggling too, but now that I'm stuck at home due to health, I work with the nonreaders and kids with reading or learning problems, one on one on Skype. 

It is good for so many learning styles because it uses audio, kinesthetic, visual, and gaming format that brings the whole process into a meaningful whole from the beginning to end.

It builds writing into the reading/learning process. Most kids enjoy the heck out of it. I don't require them to play it; I offer it as part of my teaching package, and they choose to use it. 

Just wanted to mention it. One mom above mentioned a son on the autism spectrum. Many kids with various levels of autism have greatly benefitted from it. (I give refunds if you don't like it after a week.) 

If anyone wants to learn more about it, let me know here. I just don't think I'm supposed to put a link here. And, if telling you about this program is against the rules, PLEASE let me know and remove this post. I'm really, really enjoying lots of areas of the forum, and don't want to be kicked out for mentioning this! Selling this isn't my business!

But felt I really needed to mention it, because it's such a terrific learning/teaching/reading/writing tool. Geeez, now I'm nervous about this! :/

Thanks, and let me know if you have any questions about it. :) 

[SweetSilver]

Several posters mentioned conversation and reading the written word aloud.  My husband is not a very good writer (creative or tactile-- we'd be in deep s**t if the fate of the world depended on his spelling "cereal").  Words just aren't his thing, though he is a great reader, especially of science fiction.  

(OK, my point is here somewhere in this stuffy-nosed-caffeine-deprived head of mine.  rummagerummagerummage.)  When I read what he writes aloud, it is terribly stilted and simply impossible.  He has to explain every sentence.  It just doesn't work and he can't tell what does and doesn't work because he doesn't "talk" in his head.  I talk in my head.  The books I read play like a movie.  I don't claim to be a great writer, but I do find writing easy for that reason.

When I was writing my gardening column (for nearly 3 years) most of my composition would be in my head.  I'm not so sure I liked that, since it is all I can do to quiet the racket up there to begin with.  Only after I tossed a sentence or paragraph around in my head for some time did it get written down.  Then reading it, rewriting it, over and over and over.  Finally, editing it for space (not because I couldn't write more but because my article might be cut up and placed all over the newsletter as space allowed.  As a control freak, I hated that.)  

I thought the other day how I love that my girls and I have all day to talk to each other, to me and dh.  In school their chance of conversation is necessarily diminished, but at home we can as much as we like.  We read out loud a lot, big, complicated books sometimes or snippets of the great ones.  I think that this verbal practice is a key link to creative writing in the future.  Not that it will prevent them from being more like dh because to some extent I think that is biological, same as my own habits, but I do think that it *will* make writing easier.

Ugh!  I hope I made sense on this dreary morning.

[SweetSilver]

Caffeine in hand-- I meant "mechanical" not "tactile".  I had been staring at the screen *knowing* that there was a word out there in the ether that belonged to my thought, but i just couldn't grab it.

But that's not why I hopped on here again.  I was thinking about the editing process, and how much I learned about it while I was writing my column.  The though occurred to me that writing (apart from journaling) is very different from other art forms in that extensive editing can happen at any time.  It is as much a part of the writing process as creating the words in the first place.  (I will always remember the movie Wonder Boys-- the first scene when Michael Douglas' character rolls in a piece of paper into his typewriter, types the page number "148" or some such.  He looks down briefly to his manuscript for reference, then finishes the page number with a "5".)  My articles would end up being so different from what I originally had conceived-- better, for the most part.  Only once did I reread the printed article and notice that I didn't include something that had been important at the beginning of the process.  ("Notecards!"  I hear Mrs. Michaels chiding.  I never did notecards, and my writing process is as chaotic and inexplicable as the noise in my head.)

I'm just thinking of creative writing in general, not necessarily what might be useful for kids.  But I hope my ramblings help, nonetheless.

[sonuptosondown]

Thanks so much everyone for all this insight.  I am very, very encouraged to hear about kids who just take off with writing when they are ready!  I will continue on and not push.  My 10yo ds was a late reader, I didn't push, and he just started reading books (Percy Jackson) when he was 9 and enjoys picking up anything and reading it now--instructions, scientific american, lego catalogs, computer games, or a book about rabbits because he wants a rabbit.  Both my dh and I read out loud to the kids a lot every day.  My ds is able to tell me about what he's read or learned.  Eventually writing will come.

I enjoyed also the tips for helping a writer organize his thoughts, etc., and the tip about online gaming.  My ds does play a couple games where he needs to type to "speak" to other players. 

The point about the topic sentence with supporting details: I was thinking of enrolling my ds in public school a couple years ago and, because he was homeschooled, he was required to be evaluated for proper grade level.  The woman told me very sneeringly that my son's writing lacked these things.  So this was absolutely the point where I started worrying about keeping up with where he should be in writing.

OK, I'm printing out this thread now for rereading.

Deb