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One Mom’s Lapbook Success

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

This summer we offered a Custom Writing and Language Arts Planning Program to moms who were interested in having me help them create a tailor-made writing and language arts curriculum for the year. The projects they’re completing are rolling in and I wanted to share this one as an example of how a lapbook can be used as a way to foster writing. Thanks Teresa and Joshua (10) for your permission to share your wonderful work!

Joshua’s lapbook features what he learned about sharks, a passion of his. Teresa and I discussed what to do about spelling errors, etc., via email. The basic idea is to slowly develop the skill of self-editing (kids edit their own work) and I gave her strategies for how to foster that practice successfully.

Enjoy!

–

Hi Julie,

This is for Joshua’s (10) September assignment – a mini report on Sharks.

I have attached 3 photos and retyped his text below. This is completely his design and content. What is interesting is that he wrote more about sharks in his freewrite, but he did not want to include it all in the report. He knows SO much more than he was willing to put in there. I am typing the text exactly as on the report, errors and all…

Photo “Sharks1″:
He designed it so that the photos are numbered and on a slide. When you open the book, the center writing area has the corresponding number for that photo with a blurb about it.

Youngblood

Photo “Sharks2″:
Center text:

News flash, this just came in about sharks

1) One of the five most dangeres sharks the Great white.

2) Sharks have a sixth sence of sencing energy, this shark is sencing the fishes moovment or energy.

3) This picture is about how sharks find there food.

Right flap text (fictional story):

The dog and the shark
by Joshua Youngblood

There once was a dog and shark and this is the story of how they became friends.
One day John went on is boat whith Jack his dog. They went out into the ocean, but John forgot to poot the boat tale gate up so when he made a sharp turn and Jack slipped and fell into the ocean. When John got home he realised that Jack wasn’t there, meanwhile Jack was swimming around when he saw a shark coming at him Jack thought he was going to be eatten but he was not eatten, Jack asked the shark if he could bring him home and the shark said yes and they becaum friends. The shark took Jack to John and they lived happely ever after. THE END!

Photo “Sharks3″:
Left flap text (Prelutsky poem copywork):

In the middle of the ocean,
In the deep deep dark,
Dwells a monstrous apparition,
The detested RADISHARK.
It’s an underwater nightmare
That you hope you never meet,
For it eats what it wants,
And it always wants to eat.

Its appalling, bulbous body
Is astonishingly red,
And its fangs are sharp and gleaming
In its huge and horrid head,
And the only thought it harbors
In its small but frightful mind,
Is to catch you and to bite you
On your belly and behind.

It is ruthless, it is brutal,
It swims swiftly, it swims far,
So it’s guaranteed to find you
Almost anywhere you are.
If the RADISHARK is near you,
Pray the beast is fast asleep
In the middle of the ocean
In the dark dark deep.

Tags: lapbooks
Posted in Activities, lapbooks, Poetry, Spelling, Young Writers | 5 Comments »

That Absurd Little Bird: the topic sentence

Thursday, October 8th, 2009

If you want to see my dyed gray hair stand on end, talk to me about the importance of the initial topic sentence.

My left earlobe is very attractive for three reasons.

I like anchovy ice cream more than pizza.

Captain Diaperpants is an entertaining book and I highly recommend it.

Need I go on? ::yawn::

Truth is: The topic sentence is to the paragraph what support hose are to vericose veins. We don’t really want to be aware of the work they’re doing. They offer support, yes, but why announce that fact to the world? The best ones are hidden in the compelling-to-read prose.

I was trolling the Internet the other day and read a whole bunch of sample paragraphs on a writing site for homeschooled students. The curriculum writer stressed the importance of both the topic sentence and structured, orderly writing as hallmarks of correct writing. She then conceded that this kind of writing would be “stiff and stilted and even boring in most cases,” but it didn’t matter. Didn’t matter? In what universe? The point was to learn to write these orderly, cardboard, stiff, spiritless, uninspired, i-n-s-i-p-i-d paragraphs (::grinding teeth:: ::mad hair standing on end::) with duty and diligence no matter how painful to the reader.

Oh break my writerly heart!

Reverse the curse of the initial topic sentence.

Here’s how:

Start in the middle.
Don’t tell me all I need to know in the first sentence. Once I find out that you are a black belt in karate, what interest do I have in reading how you earned the belt? Start with the struggle, facing the brick with your sore hand throbbing as you prepare to sever it in half as with a cleaver. Leave me hanging out there, flapping in the breeze, worried and curious.

Get me involved.
Use sensory detail to suck me into the scene without revealing your point until I’m hooked:

I sneezed when I leaned over the basket of cumin to examine it for bugs. The spicy fragrance reminded me of kasbahs and Moroccan stews. Unfortunately, I found myself in a modern Farmer’s Market in downtown Cincinnati instead. I miss North Africa, where I grew up.
Put the main idea at the end of the paragraph.
Most freewriting will start with a typical topic sentence that generalizes about the subject for writing. That’s fine when getting your thoughts together. To help hide the know-it-all sentence when you revise, move it to the end and see what happens. Like in the sample above—the topic sentence is last to appear. It’s so much happier modestly revealing itself at the end.

I know, I know. I didn’t even talk about the all important topic sentence in academic writing or in subsequent paragraphs. We’ll get to that another day. For now, hook me, seduce me, scare me, move me, grab me by the collar and don’t let me go. Lure me into your writing by concealing the point. That’s the point! (And that second-to-last sentence you just read, the one with the hairy mustache pretending not to be a topic sentence, is the topic sentence for this piece, artfully concealed until the end, incidentally…)

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Homeschool Advice, Language Arts, Words!, Young Writers | 7 Comments »

Why Poetry?

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

It’s been awhile since I’ve made my case for poetry. So let’s do that today!

Why poetry?

Lots of moms are intimidated by poetry, imagining that poets hide mysteries within their rhymes. They feel inadequate to plumb those depths sufficiently for insight and meaning, thinking their kids will not “get it” either. High school poetry units often left many of us scratching our heads rather than savoring language.

In the homeschool, you get to reclaim poetry as a legitimate tool of language arts. Poetry is all about the words: choices, sounds, relationships, punch. Poetry aims to get a message/story across within limits: meter, rhyme, alliteration or assonance (or both!), stanzas, numbers of words. It’s the Sudoku of language!

Here are the ways I recommend you dip your toes into the stream of poetic expression:

Read it. Don’t worry about meanings, themes, alliteration, rhyme schemes or meter. Simply let the words roll around in your mouth. Read the poem and ignore the temptation to wonder at it. Let yourself feel the words. You might only react positively to a word pair or one ending rhyme. That’s perfectly fine! In poems that don’t offer up their meanings easily, start with reading and letting yourself connect to whatever it is that draws your attention. (If nothing does, it’s fine to move on to the next poem. No need to squeeze “blood from a turnip.” You might “get it” some other year.) Also, read it through multiple times before you render a judgment. Poems benefit from multiple readings.
Listen to it. As you read it aloud (or as the poem is read to you), listen to the sounds. Ignore meanings completely. What stands out? Rhyme? Repeated vowel sounds (assonance)? Repeated initial consonant sounds (alliteration)? Repeated consonant sounds throughout the line or poem (consonance)? How about interesting word uses (a noun acting as a verb, or a made-up word like you’ll find in Carroll or cummings)? Is there a rhythm you can anticipate? Can you beat your hand to the sounds – the accented syllables versus the ones that don’t make you slap your leg? Is there a pattern (each line starts with “I wish…” or ends with “…and so it goes”)?
Listen to it for word choices. In addition to noting the sounds, note the word choices. Are there surprises (words used in ways you wouldn’t ordinarily think of them)? Are they plain Jane words (nothing special except they all go together in an interesting way)? Do you find yourself thinking about the way a word is used? Does the poet focus on concrete experiences or metaphor or something else? Is it funny? Why? Puns? Irony? Punchline humor?
Meaning or theme? Now we get down to the point of writing the poem. What’s it about? You can be as superficial as you want. Just get the gist. Consult your kids if you feel stuck. They are surprisingly insightful. Figure out if the poem paints a picture of an emotion or experience, or if it is detailing a story or telling an idea. Perhaps it is commenting on a theme such as patriotism or friendship or love or autumn.
Do you like it? Guess what? No right answers here. If you find it inscrutable, hard to read aloud, beyond your reach intellectually, of course you won’t like it and you don’t have to. It may be that you aren’t the right audience or it could be that you haven’t yet cultivated your poetic “sensibility” enough to get this more sophisticated poem. Remember: there are just some arenas where depth supports understanding (algebra and calculus are two of them; poetry is another). So if it so happens that you can’t appreciate some famous poem all your teachers told you was the best in its genre in 1762, that’s okay! You’re not there yet and you don’t need to be.

When you read poetry with kids, choose books that are high on rhyme, humor and concrete experiences. You’ll know they like it if they want to keep reading more from the same book. If they don’t, pack it up. Send it back to the library and go to the next book. The goal here is enjoyment of language. So many good (subconscious) things are going on in your head and in your kids’ heads when they play with poetry. Serve tea, cookies and a big side of optimism and your poetry experiences will become the highlight of your week. Trust me. I’ve seen it happen thousands of times.

Share favorite poetry books in the comments or ask me questions (or tell your story!). I’d love to hear from you.

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Poetry, Tips for Teen Writers, Young Writers | 6 Comments »

One Writing Project Per Month

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

Brave Writer philosophy suggests that you only tackle one writing project per month, per kid. That’s right. One a month. I figure you’ll get sidetracked by Thanksgiving or surgery or a ski trip during a couple of those months meaning, you may not complete the project slated for that month. Therefore, if you have ten projects slated and get 6-7 of them through the revision process in a school year, be happy! You’ve done good work!

But wait, how does this work? you ask. I understand. It sounds like so little output. So let me give you some guidelines for why writing less equals more value.

Let’s look at the four week process for writing any piece (paragraph, letter, essay, poem, article, story).

Week One: Saturation
During the first week, you aren’t writing. You’re reading, talking, watching videos, looking stuff up on the Internet. You might also be doing the thing you will write about. If the topic is Native American basket weaving, perhaps you will even try to weave a basket! No writing comes forth without saturation in the topic/subject matter. This is why we always recommend that your kids write about what they know well. They’ll have richer vocabulary and a deeper grasp of the topic. If the topic is new-ish to your student, you need more time to absorb the material before becoming saturated. Might take two weeks or three. Don’t rush it. Writing is the result of an overflow of knowledge about a topic. You can’t read a paragraph about Columbus and then require your child write a paragraph about Columbus. The sane response from a child is: But didn’t we just read about Columbus?
Week Two: Freewriting
The second week is when you put pen to page. This is the time to get words from the guts upchucked onto paper. We do this in any way we can. We use freewriting to help catalyze that process. You can do several freewrites over a period of days. There’s no law in the writing world that says the first draft is the only draft. You can select parts of the topic to write about and do those over two or three days with breaks in between. During the freewriting (or drafting) week, the goal is to get as much raw writing to work with as possible. Think of a specific aspect of the topic (gathering materials for basket weaving) and write about it. Then on another day focus on another aspect (patterns in basket weaving). Break it up! Makes life so much happier.
Week Three: Revision
Revision is not the same thing as editing (when I use the term). Revision is injecting new vision into the raw writing. It’s re-imagining the piece so that it springs to life. During revision, you want to focus on content, not mechanics. That means you’ll read the freewrites and look at places you can narrow the focus and expand the writing. Perhaps your child wrote, “Basket weaving is hard work.” You can look at that sentence and ask for more! What does he mean by “hard work”? Can he describe the process? And so on. You might want to rewrite the opening line (I always recommend that). Make it pop, surprise, sizzle. Draw the reader right in. Revision can take many days or short bursts of energy tackling a little bit at a time. Don’t do it all in one day. Don’t fatigue your young writer. Revise two or three important content related items and leave the rest alone. (Psst. I promise anything you don’t correct in this piece will magically reappear in another for you to address at a later date.)
Week Four: Mechanics Mop-up
Now you edit. Editing is simply cleaning up all the stuff that makes the paper hard to read: misspellings, missing punctuation, grammar errors, typos, indentations. Have your child look over his or her work first. Let the student find as many errors as possible. You only make the additional changes once the child has taken a whack at it. Never complain about something he or she missed. Make a mental note that you need to address the semi-colon in copywork or dictation. Let what they miss be information to guide you in teaching; don’t use it as a way to shame your child. Print and share with readers.

Once you work through this process, you’ll have had a rich experience of how writing is supposed to work. Believe me, doing this 5-6 times in a year is a huge amount of teaching! Far superior to cranking out contrived paragraphs based on tedious writing prompts in a workbook. Give your kids the chance to experience what writers actually do. They saturate and incubate. They mess around with words, getting their ideas onto the page or computer screen however they might. They revise those words once they get a little distance to make them more compelling and interesting. Then they mop up the mistakes and share it with readers! Your kids get to do that too. For more information on how to do this process, see The Writer’s Jungle.

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Homeschool Advice, Machete Mechanics, The Writer's Jungle, Writing Exercises, Young Writers | 9 Comments »

Email: Tweaking the assignment to the student

Sunday, July 26th, 2009

Hi Julie,

In your FAQ section of The Writer’s Jungle you mention how kids can write about anything and do it well if they can find something about the topic that hooks their fascination. I’m wondering what this looks like in real life.

Can you tell me how the following 5th & 6th grade students would attack the following assignment?
Write a Report on Christopher Columbus

Student A: This girl is a natural talker, loves to write in great detail, is very fashion conscious, and is able to find a number of ways to earn money.

Student B: A very analytical boy — math is his strong suit. He doesn’t enjoy flowerly detail and wants to get to the facts and get the job done.

Student C: This child is very art oriented and enjoys science and animals.

Student D: This child does great at writing fictional stories — very into dramatic writing not factual.

Maybe these scenarios are not enough to go on and if not — what kinds of questions can I ask the kids to find out what their natural bent is? How can I help them when they are given a generic assignment to find their own groove and write from within?

Thanks!
Kellie

Great question Kellie!

Let’s go one student at a time. Remember: these are ideas that may or may not work with individual kids. The idea is to shift your focus to the student’s natural bent and inclinations, away from strictures of an assignment. One thing to know: the most successful writers do this all the time instinctively. They hardly know they are doing it! So it’s not cheating. It’s smart writing.

Student A: This girl is a natural talker, loves to write in great detail, is very fashion conscious, and is able to find a number of ways to earn money.

Perhaps her interest in Columbus will be to choose an aspect of his character (personality? his attempts to get funding for his trip? his fashion sense?) to describe in detail. Let her hone in on one aspect (rather than generalizing) and see if she can get intimately acquainted with the most interesting part of who Columbus is. Start there. You can always add less interesting detail (biographical information or the timeline of his trip, etc.) once she’s given her full attention to the part that interests her most.

Student B: A very analytical boy — math is his strong suit. He doesn’t enjoy flowerly detail and wants to get to the facts and get the job done.

This kind of kid does well with making a list to start. Let him itemize the factual details of the life of Columbus. Choose the most interesting, surprising fact to open the report. Let him organize the facts into categories and use sub-heads for each section. He can freewrite and then revise each group of facts one at a time. Then organize chronologically using sub-headings to provide natural structure and transitions.

Student C: This child is very art oriented and enjoys science and animals.

Columbus may be a hard sell for this kid. Perhaps write on something else. (smile) Also, could do pictorial narration with artwork and captions.

Student D: This child does great at writing fictional stories — very into dramatic writing not factual.

Put the report into a narrative style, telling it from Columbus’s perspective or alternatively this student could write from the perspective of a crew member on the ship. In The Writer’s Jungle, Gabrielle Linnell wrote a piece called “An Adventuring Maid.” She did research to have all her historical details accurately represented in her work, but she wrote her piece as a fictional narrative. This kind of work is a wonderful way to make writing spring to life. I like to use Jean Fritz’s books as an example of how history can be written in an engaging manner all while conveying the important historical information.

I hope that helps you get an idea of what you might be able to accomplish if you widen your expectations and apply some creativity. As a side note. I graduated with my Master’s in theology in 2007. I had finals that included writing my own contemporary epistle, writing a translation, putting my theological thoughts into poetry, freewriting and personal experience as well as your standard academic formats. I thought I’d throw that out because there is a perception that all the writing anyone will ever do in the future is essays and research papers. Not necessarily. (smile)

Posted in Email, General, Homeschool Advice, The Writer's Jungle, Writing Exercises, Young Writers | 8 Comments »

The lens matters

Monday, June 1st, 2009

Caitrin has told me for years that she doesn’t like history. Her sister before her didn’t like it either. And naturally, I was a history major, totally happy to overdose on historical fiction. They, however, were not.

We tried the Story of the World books and the Brown Paper School ones. Caitrin was compliant, just not engaged. What really interested her, however, has been everything related to being female: fashion to abortion, women’s rights to make-up. Her appetite for these topics drove her out of the juvenile book section and smack into adult reading. Last week she found a book that completely captured her imagination: Women’s Letters (edited by Lisa Grunwald and Stephen J. Adler). This volume is enormous: nearly 800 pages of letters. They span our entire history from the Revolutionary War to nearly the present (Iraq War 2005). They are written to husbands, sons, daughters, sisters. Each letter has some kind of note to contextualize the circumstances or to explain idiomatic expressions current to that era.

Caitrin is enthralled. Suddenly her ability to retain information related to our country’s founding is effortless. The connections support the information. She’s able to retain the facts because they are related to something she cares about.

Last night as we were driving to deliver cookies to her customers (she has a cookie business, taken over from her older brother), she mentioned in the car, “I’d like to keep writing over the summer along with math. I’m realizing that I want to keep my routine going and to prepare for the day when I go to school.” I said I thought that was a brilliant plan. So we brainstormed some writing ideas and quickly found ourselves talking about letter writing. Could she write letters that reflect various eras? She liked that idea and then went on to discuss how our era has letter writing, but it’s electronic. She wondered how these letters would be preserved. She mused about the way letter writing had changed (was more informal, not so literate and beautiful to read; yet still so entertaining and compelling). We looked at what kind of women could have written letters in the 1700′s (highly educated, women of means) versus today (where nearly every girl in America can read and write and type).

It was a rich, interesting, interest-generated conversation. Her resistance to history had crumbled. As we pulled into the driveway, she said, “It’s so funny. I thought I didn’t like history. But I really do.” All I could think was, she hadn’t had the right lens for viewing it. I’m glad that she was our fifth child. It made it easier to trust the process and to “get out of the way.”

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, General, Homeschool Advice, One Thing, Unschooling, Young Writers | 7 Comments »

We teach writers, not writing

Monday, May 18th, 2009

When asked to sum up the essence of Brave Writer, I like to start by looking at the company name: Brave Writer (not Brave Writing). That was a deliberate choice. Most companies describe themselves as “writing instruction.” Brave Writer could be described as “writer coaching.” Our core value is to honor people: their voices, their insights, their unique learning styles, their real felt needs, their gifts and talents, their weaknesses and struggles. Writing is the result of unlocking words that lurk inside writers. As a result, we spend our energies in service of people: exploring their experience and process, explicating what is going on inside to help them connect to those words, and then get them to paper.

An analogy I like to use is the difference between reading a book that explains the nature of pregnancy (what is it biologically, what happens to your body and the baby’s, what are the stages of pregnancy, what are the signs of labor, how does birth happen, what kind of birthing options are available, and so on) and reading a book that helps you understand what you will go through as a pregnant person (how to manage cravings or signs of cramping, what sorts of exercises help prepare for natural childbirth, what emotions you’ll experience during each stage, possible ways to cure morning sickness or to relieve swollen ankles, how to handle gestational diabetes, what the body sensations are of swollen breasts and that inevitable “drop” right before labor…).

The first book may give you lots of information you want to know (and all of us want to know it!), but the second is designed to hold your hand as you walk through your pregnancy. In the first, you are left to interpret for yourself how to apply that information to your experience. In the second, someone is actually describing your experience and then sharing possible tactics for managing it and making it more pleasurable, tolerable and enjoyable.

Most writing manuals are like the first kind of pregnancy book. They tell you what a descriptive paragraph is, for instance, and what one must contain to fit the definition. Those manuals provide examples of other descriptive paragraphs; they may even give of list of elements to include. What they don’t do is describe in a process-oriented way what is going on inside of the writer while trying to access descriptive language.

Brave Writer is like the second kind of pregnancy book. Brave Writer materials and classes focus on the writer: “I want to write that descriptive paragraph and include those elements, but how do I find the clever or interesting words hiding inside of me? What do I do with my writer’s block? What happens when I churn out a lousy first draft – how do I revise it?” Brave Writer provides you with a collection of experiences, techniques and coaching insights derived from the writing lives of other writers, as well as investigative tools to help you and your kids dig deeper inside to catalyze writing.

In essence, our programs are labor coaches. We not only know what gestational stage your kids are in when they attempt to birth writing (some of them may still need to get pregnant and we can even help there!), we know how to coax those words forward so that once they make it to the page, we can go ahead and shape them up into something concrete like a descriptive paragraph or an essay. See the difference?

That’s why we say: We teach writers, not writing.

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Homeschool Advice, Tips for Teen Writers, Words!, Young Writers | 5 Comments »

Email: Spelling

Thursday, May 14th, 2009

Hello, Julie.

I have some samples and questions regarding my son’s horrid spelling that I was hoping you would not mind giving me some guidance with. My son, Clay, just turned 9 in March and he says he hates to write (and read). He reads at grade level (3rd) or a little below. He enjoys stories ~ he says he hates reading however because he stresses himself out regarding the length of the story and the amount of writing per page. He does plenty of copy work and has very neat writing. He is struggling with creative writing because he is challenged to get his thoughts out of his head and onto paper. We don’t do a lot of creative/freewriting becasue he is young and I don’t push him.

(more…)

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Dictation and copywork, Email, Homeschool Advice, Language Arts, Young Writers | 5 Comments »

Hurry! Last minute registrations for KWI, HH and Adv. Comp

Thursday, April 2nd, 2009

Kidswrite Intermediate, Hand-Holders and Advanced Composition all start Monday. They all have space. You may not see them again until the next school year. Don’t miss your chance to get in on these important classes.

Quick notes: Kidswrite Intermediate is one of the most unique writing courses on the market! We use exploratory writing tools (specially created by me, Julie Bogart) to draw out the rhetorical thinking and linguistic creativity necessary for powerful academic essay writing and crafting in high school and college. I’m telling you – learning to write a dusty dry essay just doesn’t cut it. We’ve got to help our teens translate that spark and writing aliveness into a forceful, compelling academic writing style. Who teaches that? We do! Sign up today. Your teens will love it. It’s the most energizing, surprising class they’ll take this year. Nothing like what they’ve done before.

Hand-Holders is a brand new tool created on request from countless Brave Writer Moms. After working through KWB or The Writer’s Jungle, many moms want the comfort, accountability and support of a BW instructor to help them continue to guide their children into productive writing projects. Christine Gable, instructor, is especially equipped to help you. She’ll give you all the tools and support you need to finish out the school year strong!

And last, but most certainly not least, is Advanced Composition which I teach! I don’t get to do the online classes as much as I used to so don’t miss this chance to put your teens with me. I use all my academic experience to help your kids be up to the minute in their preparation for what colleges expect in their essay assignments. If you wonder what other kinds of essays your kids will be called on to write, these are the ones: definition and textual analysis are commonly assigned in the undergraduate programs. Don’t miss this last minute chance to get your teens ready for fall (if they’re seniors) or for the coming year of writing (if they’re juniors). I’ll happily take some precocious sophomores, too.

Posted in BW products, General, Tips for Teen Writers, Young Writers | No Comments »

Lists

Thursday, April 2nd, 2009

Writing wears kids out, have you noticed? They may get that burst of linguistic energy working for them (when the inspiration strikes, they’re hard to stop!), but when they’re done, they’re done. Sometimes after a successful writing project, all anyone wants to do is lie about doing nothing.

While taking some time off, or while your kids aren’t quite proficient enough to write lengthy passages of prose, you might try writing lists. Lists can be an incredibly therapeutic way to interact with language. For one thing, there is no shortage of topics for lists. Let me give you a quick list (ha!) of what you can list:
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Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Copywork Quotations, Games, Homeschool Advice, Language Arts, Nature Walks, Unschooling, Words!, Writing Exercises, Young Writers | No Comments »

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