If a friend found a hundred dollar bill on the sidewalk and asked if she could buy you a present with some of the money what would you tell her and why?
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Image by Guilherme Torelly (cc)
Archive for September, 2014
Friday Freewrite: Hundred dollar bill
Sonnet of the Seasons
Julie,
While cleaning out folders and getting ready for the new school year I found a poem that my daughter Emily (age 11) wrote at the end of last school year. I’m not sure if I shared it with you at the time or not.
We were using the Arrow Poetry lessons and I also checked a book out of the library called P is for Poetry (A Poetry Alphabet Book) that had descriptions and examples of various kinds of poetry. This was something she did just for fun. I wanted to share it with you.
I’m so thankful to Brave Writer for inspiring better writing from my girls!
Venessa
Sonnet of the Seasons
by Emily
I step out of my house and start to sing,
The white fur turned to brown atop the hare,
The new life starts to celebrate the Spring,
Now running through the grass my feet are bare.
But Woosh! Woosh! Ping! The nice grass turns to pods,
I step up, “Here I go!” I take a dive,
The water underneath me feels so cool!
And now I feel so glad to be alive!
But suddenly the green leaves turn to gold,
This time of harvest is the turkey’s fate,
For when the leaves fall from the tree’s weak hold,
Yummy turkey meat is on my plate.
And now that lovely autumn isn’t here,
I’m glad to say that winter break is near!
Image by Sundar M (cc)
Is Your Child in the Jot It Down Stage?
Jotting down what your kids tell you isn’t a short cut to writing. It IS writing.
Does your child:
- excitedly share stories and experiences but is blocked when trying to write them down?
- have a more sophisticated vocabulary than what they write?
- refuse to pen more than a word or two at one time?
- struggle with handwriting or spelling?
If you answered yes to any of these then your child may be in the Jot It Down stage.
Kids in that stage are often between the ages of five and eight, but age doesn’t matter so much. What matters is where they are in the Natural Stages of Growth.
If your child is in the Jot It Down stage:
- Forget all the scopes and sequences.
- Focus on love, joy, and self-expression.
- Read books together.
- Watch movies together.
- Have big, juicy conversations.
- Play with words.
- Catch your child in the act of thinking or storytelling and write down what he says.
- Let her dictate with you acting as secretary.
- With your child’s permission, share some of his thoughts and stories with family and friends.
This is how you slowly help your child see the value of putting thoughts into writing.
So, each time something happy or interesting happens, jot it down. Pay attention to your kids—as in, pay attention to their happiness quota.
- Play games
- Have tea
- Laugh at jokes
- Record the clever things your child says
- Have them write one beautiful word a day instead of a whole passage
- Use gel pens and brightly colored paper sprayed with perfume!
Continue to learn handwriting and spelling but do that through copywork not your child’s original thoughts.
Jot It Down stage in action!
Need more support?
Check out Brave Writer’s Jot It Down! Writing Projects.
Poetry Teatime: Had a BLAST
We have been slowly adding in more Bravewriter to our school days. This week we added in tea time and my boys who are 13 and 11 thought it was the silliest thing I have ever come up with. They tried to get out of doing it. I pulled out some poetry books that I got from the library, cookies and lemonade. I told them they could get a tea cup from the china cabinet if they wanted. That got them interested. We never use those cups. They finally sat down and had a BLAST!!!!!
We also added in copywork. Which has been going really well! No complaints at all! They also LOVED the game where one of them draws a picture and then has to describe it so the other can draw it. That was a huge hit.
Thanks!
Lori
Image (cc)
Visit our Poetry Teatime website!
Why we use writing to teach writing
An email question from Lisa:
“I love your curriculum but really do not like the Format for the online classes. Please look into live Online instruction. Most students are not going to Read through all the post of others in the class. This Really doesn’t give the group interaction live Instruction does.”
My response, in case you are wondering the same things:
Hi Lisa!
Thanks for your feedback. We welcome it! I’d like to explain to you a bit about our style of instruction. It’s a deliberate choice on my part, not an accident, not because I haven’t “updated” to the current style of online instruction. In fact, what we do mirrors what colleges offer in Blackboard, Coursera, and Canvas. It is my belief that reading and writing create the best writers, and that lecture (while it can be enjoyable and even a short cut at times in explanations given) is not as effective in growing writers.
We’ve taught our online classes using this technique for 15 years. We’ve taught more than 15,000 students worldwide. It’s a deliberate decision based on pedagogy. Students are trained to read, understand, interpret, and apply what they read to their writing. All the interaction in our classroom is reading and writing—reading feeds writing and enables growth and development that lecture cannot/does not impart. Even the questions students ask are written and the responses are written. This helps writing growth in the following ways:
- Students learn to clarify their thoughts in the written word, and have a record of those thoughts as they develop so that the words they create don’t “vanish” into the thin air of spoken language, but remain visible to the student for continued reference.
- Students read the assignments and processes, which gives them vocabulary that will become useful in their own writing. They are able to scroll back through, re-read, and assimilate the language, structure, and ideas from the written word. Writing is necessarily just enough different from speech that it is of enormous help to read rather than listen.
- Reading skill (the ability to analyze and process meaning and content from the written word) is the key skill in writing development. No other process has been more strongly linked to writing growth than reading.
We’ve discovered that our students do, in fact, read most of the posts (some can’t get enough of them—they read and reread!). What happens is that our students wade into the waters of writing gently. They are not distracted by hairstyles, tone of voice, personality, and their own fatigue or boredom or hunger. They come to the classroom when they are ready to concentrate and read and reread if they need to.
They have ample time to form their thoughts and consider what they are reading. There’s no “pop question” type pressure to respond in the moment over audio-visual equipment. They have ample access to the instructor for her feedback which is carefully crafted and thoughtfully given.
I’ve taught at the university level, and in many in-person contexts for writing (with homeschoolers). I am never as satisfied with the writing growth in those class environments as I am with my online classes. We use reading and writing to teach reading and writing. it works.
I hope you’ll try us!
Julie
You can still sign up for fall classes now!
Image by Brave Writer mom, Renee (cc)
