Archive for the ‘Writing Exercises’ Category

Word Play

Give each child a book (pick any book in the house – non-fiction, fiction, reference).

Part One
Hand out a piece of paper and a pencil or pen to each kid.
Set the timer for fifteen minutes. Yell, “Go!”

During the fifteen minutes, write down words (straight down the page in a column) that start with one letter in length and go up to fifteen letters.
If they get to fifteen before the time is over, start again at a one letter word (put it next to the one letter word that is already there in a second column and then go on down the line again, two letter word, three letter word and so on down the page in the second column).

Don’t overthink this game. Just get words of the right length – all kinds of words: verbs, adjectives, adverbs, nouns, prepositions.

When the timer “dings,” stop looking and writing.

Part Two
Identify the part of speech. What kind of word is each one? Name it. Jot down the abbreviation (n., art., adv., adj., v., and so on).

Part Three
Create word pairs. Put them together to make funny rhymes, descriptions, short phrases. Try nonsense pairs and see what happens. Put them out of order grammatically and see how they sound and why that does or doesn’t work. See if a word can be both a noun and a verb. Play with the words in pairs.

Part Four
On another day, use ten of the words (minimum) in a freewrite. Keep the paper in front of you and allow the words to help you create a story or a narrative that includes the words you found. Post your results on the Scratch Pad, if you like!

Quick P.S. Words longer than ten letters are tough to find. Let your child know that he or she can skip any length word and move onto the next length, coming back to it later when finding a word or simply leaving it blank. The goal is not a perfectly completed list, but engagement with language in a new way. 🙂

Posted in General, Tips for Teen Writers, Writing Exercises, Young Writers | Comments Off on Word Play

Literary Elements for Teens: Song Lyrics

Literary Elements for Teens: Song Lyrics

One of the benefits of teaching a co-op class to juniors and seniors is that I am exposed to children that aren’t my own in a sustained, in-person format. I’ve taught hundreds of teens online for four and six week installments, but being able to work with students for an entire year, every week, with their immediate feedback (and even the feedback of their mothers) has given me new things to share about how the writing process grows in teens.

One of the practices I’ve installed in our weekly class is to deconstruct song lyrics every week. I began by modelling how its done using a song by Sting called “Fill ‘Er Up” off of the Brand New Day CD. We looked at the song structure (the way it follows a narrative formula: Action, Background, Development, Climax and Ending – ABDCE). We looked at the alternative names for this kind of structure: Set-up, Build-up and Pay-off.

Then we analyzed some of the metaphors and similes that are in this popular song, the role of nature to create the climax, the change in lyrics, singer and musical style during the pay-off and what Sting’s message is given how he resolves the conflict in the story.

It’s a great little song (a surprising one!) and it works every time to give students a chance to discover how literary elements work (they tend to believe that they are real more readily through song lyrics than in short stories or novels…).

So for the following weeks, each student brought a song to share and prepared to explain the structure (if there was one) and the use of metaphor, symbolism, simile, climax, and so on to communicate a message. We asked, “What is the message of this song?”

Here’s the funny thing. We meet once a week. Most of the kids are getting their work done, but there are at least half of them who are missing at least one assignment. They only have to do the song explication once in the semester and were assigned their dates at the beginning of the course. I never reminded any of them of their due dates. Not a single person forgot his/her date and every single one came prepared and enthusiastic to class with CD and lyrics to be handed out. Every student had something worthwhile to share. For those less able to delve into lyrics, the class supplied what was missing.

This was by far their favorite assignment of the semester.

The most amazing thing has occurred: these students know their literary elements. We didn’t crack a book or read poetry or study a novel. We listened to songs – songs they love and picked themselves. Through that medium, they came to “believe” in the power of literary elements and repeatedly showed me in their writing that they were “catching on.”

If you have the chance to listen to music together – music your teen loves – and can look at the intentional use of literary elements in that song, you will open a door that will not be easily closed.

Julie

Image by Lindsey Turner (cc cropped)

Posted in Help for High School, Tips for Teen Writers, Writing Exercises | Comments Off on Literary Elements for Teens: Song Lyrics

Holiday Letter Tips

Have you thought about having your kids write the holiday letter this year? Here’s a list of ways to involve them.

  1. One section per family member (with photo).
    Let your child choose one or two activities that were memorable from last year to talk about in his or her section. Do not simply list all the sports she played or subjects he studied. Pick a memorable moment and write about it with as much panache as can be injected into five or six lines.
  2. Mini newspaper.
    Ask each child to write an article that features a family event from the previous year. Some good candidates are: family vacation, individual successes, new pets, any big change like a move or remodel or new job/school situation, funniest memory with the family, a “spotlight” article on one of the parents or children who achieved something notable (completion of a degree, went on a safari, performed in a community theater production, was promoted…).
  3. Photo Collage
    For younger kids, a photo collage works great. Pick a few representative photos from the year and ask your kids to write the captions. Funny photos make for better newsletters than straight head shots with smiles.
  4. Cartoons and comic strips
    The artistic among you might enjoy making a comic strip that details the events of the year. If you have difficulty drawing likenesses of the characters, you can use color Xeroxing to use photographs with captions in a sequence.
  5. One child writes the whole thing (while you take bubble bath)
    You can always turn the whole project over to one child who will interview family members and then combine the whole into a letter from the entire family. These letters are best written by kids who are early to late teens. Be sure to talk to each person and include quotations!

Turn your kids loose this year.

We wrote a funny family letter that we sent via email last year. In it, I regaled our friends with our average achievements: No one won any tournaments, no child was picked for select sports’ teams, we had no honor students or straight A kids, and we certainly did not buy a new house, get a new car or develop a cure for cancer in our free time!

Then we talked about all the wonderfully ordinary things we do as a family at home 24/7. You might like to do that – share your regular life, the real life with socks in the hallway when company shows up – to give everyone on your list a break from reading what are usually more like family resumes than holiday letters!

Julie

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Writing Exercises | 1 Comment »

The “Discipline” of Writing

Most of what we think and read about discipline only increases our resistance [to writing]. “Discipline” usually means making ourselves do some duty, grit our teeth, force ourselves to do what we don’t want to do. A disciplined writer, we are told (or we tell ourselves) writes every day, writes X number of hours a say or X number of pages or paragraphs a day. We read how someone else structures his or her writing life, and we judge ourselves (or we judge our kids) by that pattern. Unfortunately, many books on writing reinforce the idea of discipline.

The wrong kind of “discipline” damages the creative process. The deepest, truest discipline has its roots in the ancient wisdom of the Hebrew prophet Zechariah: “Not by might, nor by power, but by… spirit.” Rather than comparing ourselves with duty and guilt, we need to have a gentle, compassionate, and non-judgmental spirit toward our writing. William Burroughs said, “There is no such thing as will power. Only need.” The roots of a useful discipline lie in understanding ourselves, and that is a gentle matter. (Pat Schneider, Writing Alone and with Others)

If we insert our children into each of the places where Pat Schneider speaks directly to the writer, we will see that it is even more important to be gentle with our children, with those in our care who are not ourselves! It takes extra attentiveness to be gentle with another person.

The writing life will look different family to family, homeschool to homeschool, child to child.

Schneider continues:

Discipline begins by understanding how you yourself work. Everyone’s patterns are different. You can learn something about how you work by remembering successes of the past. For example, when you accomplished a project—fixing the car, making a gift—how did you go about it? Did you lay out careful plans first and proceed in an orderly way, cleaning up after yourself as you went along? Or did you barge in with more energy than planning, change your plans as you went along, decide to do a portion of it somewhat differently from the instructions?

From there she suggests remembering successes in writing and paying attention to how they came about. We do a lot of that in Brave Writer—spending time remembering what makes the writing flow: knowledge of the subject matter, being able to write in a factual manner or through the use of story, being sure there is an audience outside of the home, having time to write a mess first and clean it up later, taking time to separate the steps into separate days, narrowing the topic.

So spend some time thinking about what makes the conditions just right for your kids to enjoy a disciplined (not an oxymoron) writing life.

Posted in Advice from the pros, General, Writing Exercises | Comments Off on The “Discipline” of Writing

Free Three Week Writing Class on Scratch Pad

I have a couple things to share today.

1. We are looking for a new name for the Scratch Pad. The Scratch Pad is currently home to the discussion that goes with Brave Writer. It is the place where I can see your kids’ writing and offer feedback. It is the place where you can ask writing and grammar questions, where you can talk to other moms about how they are making the Brave Writer Lifestyle a natural part of their lives, where you can share your own writing aspirations and goals!

I will take suggestions for new names that capture the essence of the Scratch Pad and will award the winner with her choice of materials (Arrow, Slingshot back issues or the evaluation tools).

2. We have a steadily increasing volume of posts on the Scratch Pad, but for it to really serve its function, we’ll need a more regular community of posters. To help you “risk” sharing about your homeschool writers, I am offering a short freebie class on the Scratch Pad.

Starting on Monday, October 17th, I will post an easy writing project per week for three weeks. You can work on the writing project with your kids and then post the results (or problems and issues you’re having) on the Scratch Pad. Then I will show you all how to comment on each other’s work so that you can support each other as writing coaches.

For those of you who didn’t get in the last batch of writing classes, this is a good chance to get some writing in before winter quarter when the new classes begin (I’ll be posting the new class list tomorrow on the website and will also post a link to that schedule here.)

Visit the Scratch Pad today!

First project will be posted Sunday night, October 16th so we can get started Monday morning. Tell your friends!

Julie

P.S. If you would like to be a part of this free class, please email me. I’d like a general idea of how many moms will participate.

Posted in General, Writing Exercises | Comments Off on Free Three Week Writing Class on Scratch Pad