New Year Energy

As so many teachers go back to school this week, I’m feeling a little smug that I get to stay at home. I remember so clearly the feeling of that first week back at school – it was like I’d jumped on a runaway train saturated with all the planning, meetings, dates and things to think about for the coming term and year. The super-relaxed holiday brain had trouble comprehending the sheer mass of stuff to stuff in and slot into brain spaces for later retrieval. There are many things about teaching that I dont miss, but I do really miss that wonderful relationship with the children I’ve worked with, and I miss the connection with some of the talented colleagues I was lucky enough to teach with.

Recently I discovered in my files something that may be useful to teachers. It popped up out of my computer when I was looking for something else. When I first wrote ‘Writing is a Journey – tips, lessons and Montessori perspective for teachers’, I asked a few teachers if they would send me some questions about teaching writing that I was intending to put in the book. They didnt make it into the book but I think they are likely useful so im going to paste them here with my answers. Hope someone somewhere finds them helpful.

Questions from S

What to do when a child resists story writing. They’re competent telling stories and verbalizing ideas but they have difficulty getting ideas onto paper. 

It’s a slow gentle process. Usually with a child who is very able to tell a story, but not yet able to get words to paper, I’ve found that they may have a difficulty with the physical act of writing or they may be a perfectionist and not able to start putting their ideas down. It’s  great to give a child like this more practice physically writing, but also to examine the experience of an author’s process. Writing festivals or author talks are great in addition to the trusty read-aloud to enable talk about what authors do. How did they give us an idea of that character? What sentences tell us that…..? Often this will get a child curious about the craft of writing. Engage the child by asking the group in a lesson to conjure a description of a place or a person.

 I think to encourage writing pen on paper the first thing to do is to get the storyteller child to tell their story BUT then to choose one moment in the long story they are telling. We want them to really look at the details and be able to show these in writing so another person can read and be transported to that place or to empathise with a character and how they feel. The first step is to teach how to elaborate using the details of that moment or character. If the physical act of writing is difficult then it may be good to have some scribed and some they write depending on the struggle they have. Stay short and in the moment.

EXAMPLE Staying in the moment:

My brother had blonde hair. Some said he was the image of a Greek god when he was a teenager, because of the way his curls clung tightly to his head, on a broad set of shoulders, his blue eyes shining out from under a seventies afro cut. Standing next to me now, he is two heads taller, with a salt and pepper head of curly grey, and still spouting a series of dry jokes to make me laugh.

 OR

The river ran through the place, like a carving knife, carrying all that it found in its path. It was brown, muddy and dangerous. I was thinking that we should drive away before the bridge collapsed, as it surely would. Dad had his hands on the wheel, foot on the brake. He was staring into the space ahead.

‘What’s up dad? ‘I said.

What is the sequence of writing stories for a child coming into Cycle 2 ( 6 – 9 class) to becoming a competent story writer?

That’s a big question.

What is competent? Ascertain what this child’s competencies are and then see where the needs lie.

There are many opportunities to teach parts of the writing process. Take the child from where they are. There is always elaboration and dialogue to get better at and these are some of the basic crafting skills. Often when a child has achieved plenty of volume of writing, they can be given lessons on how to elaborate and how to write good dialogue using speech attributions – elaboration to lift the calibre of their work.

 Elaborate in the style of a writer they admire. Find new and exciting similes and metaphor to make comparisons with. Higher order skills such as building tension, foreshadowing, revising work with a writer’s eye, writing amazing beginnings or endings. (See my lessons and ideas in chapters in the book).

Writing involves thinking. Is it always necessary that children need to sit on their own to write stories? 

No I don’t think so. Sometimes to get ideas we all need some time to just think and that could be walking along the street to school, or sitting on their own in the garden, or classroom.  Collaboration has a place in all writing whether it’s in partners talking to each other about ideas, children critiquing or editing each other’s work, or collaborating on writing a story together. I also think there is a place where a child writes their own story and collaborates during other parts of the process as outlined above. Some children choose to sit on their own to write as they can’t concentrate well with others around them. Other children seem to manage to write while others in a group around them are doing something different. The teacher manages the classroom according to the observed child’s needs.