When it might hurt their feelings, how do you feel about telling your friends the truth?
Archive for October, 2005
Grammar, Spelling, and Word Games
These require no preparation. Just pick one and get started! No more grammar, vocabulary and spelling guilt.
- Over breakfast, identify the parts of speech for every action you perform and item you use. Stump each other, if you can. I chowed the chow while chewing. (Chowed: verb, Chow: noun, Chewing: gerund)
- Grab a stack of magazines or books and thumb through them until you find a word you don’t know. Look it up and use it in a sentence. (You can make this a game by suggesting that everyone do it at the same time and then share the word at teatime. See if anyone knows what it means and how to use it before the “expert” teaches them what it is.)
- Turn nouns into verbs: I chaired the meeting, I tabled the discussion, I forked over the money, I couched my words in apologies…
- Look up the name of a bird and then memorize its Latin name. See if there is a relationship between the Latin and the English. Look it up online and see if you can find out what the Latin means.
- Make a word scramble. Everyone picks five words, scrambles the spellings and then passes the list of scrambled words to the right. Set the timer for three minutes. Unscramble as quickly as you can. When the bell rings, pass the list to the right again. Reset the timer and go. Keep going until every word is unscrambled. Work with your neighbor if your list is finished. The goal isn’t to win, but for the entire group to unscramble every single word.
My (least) Favorite Things
Stop the madness! Let’s get some quality going in the first line of your kids’s paragraphs.
Because people believe that the opening topic sentence is supposed to be a generalization that the subsequent sentences in the paragraph unpack, the “I love spaghetti” opening is by far the most popular with kids. It requires no real commitment or depth and covers a multitude of trite supporting sentences.
The other common (aka: boring) opening line (which is more like a warm-up than a real topic sentence) is the “Roller blading is my favorite sport.”
“I love…”
“My favorite is…”
What’s wrong with these stand-bys?
- Too general
The mind prefers complexity and detail to generalizations. When reading, we hook into language that causes the imagination to work. These statements numb the imagination. - Too much
Where can the writing go after you’ve told me you love spaghetti or roller blading is your favorite sport? We’re finished. The end is known and we can go home.Better writing leads me on a journey to a surprising end. I might anticipate where the journey will take me, but I don’t want a sledge hammer of information right at the beginning. Seduce me, provoke me, hook me, surprise me.
- Too flat
Strong opening lines have curves. They are three dimensional:The noodle dangled from my lips as my father leaned toward me to slurp the other end. The race was on. Who would reach the middle first and suck it out of the other one’s mouth?
Beginning with an experience creates that 3D image better than a statement of incontrovertible fact.
So now you know.
Tuesday Teatime: A Summer Tea
Dear Julie,
We have been enjoying teatime since the end of July. And although the facial expressions might belie the fact, teatime is one of the highlights of our week.
Each child chose a poem on Monday and kept it a secret until Tuesday afternoon. They bookmarked lots of other poems in an effort to keep the Chosen One from being discovered. All the extra bookmarks did cause a bit of confusion, but eventually everyone located their Chosen One. We were then treated to readings of “Yankee Doodle,” “The Birthday Child,” “My Shadow,” and “Roger the Dog.” We munched Scottish Shortbread and drank glasses of ice cold milk before running outside to play.
Thank you for encouraging us to explore the wonders of poetry in such an enjoyable way!
A Brave Mom
High School Writing
I’m teaching a co-op writing class for 11th and 12th graders. After years of online teaching, I get a huge kick out of seeing my students’ faces react to the things I say. I love the immediate feedback! Very fun.
We’re using my high school writing manual as the basis for our studies. Here are a few things I noticed in their writing from the first Module: Musical Language. If you’re using it, you might like to pay attention to these potential issues:
- Adverbs
Pay attention to adverbs in descriptive writing. They can be a substitute for getting to the core of the experience.Example: “She opened the door, timidly.”
Better: “She cracked open the door and peeked around the corner before entering.”
- Passive voice
Put the passive in active voice.Example: “I was being shot by my dad when we went paintballing last weekend.”
Better: “My dad shot me. After all, we went paintballing last weekend.”
When you revise, check for these and then make adjustments.
More suggestions for high school revisions to come! Feel free to send me your questions and suggestions for high school blogging topics, particularly if you are using the Help for High School manual.
