Archive for the ‘Young Writers’ Category

Boggle your writer

Anne said:

Julie:
I really appreciate your Brave Writer site. Your words have removed much of my fear and rigidity around teaching writing.

My ten year old daughter and I often play Boggle or Cribbage during mealtime. We sometimes play Boggle cooperatively, just seeing how many words we can jot down together. Lately we have been taking the word lists generated from one or two sessions of Boggle and then writing poems or snippets of a story. Starting with a word list is so much easier than starting with a blank page. When (and if) she grants me permission I will send you a sample of her writing. No guarantees.

Thanks for your site.
Anne

I said:

Thank you Anne!

I’d like to post your suggestion to the blog this week. Would that be all right with you?

Julie

She replied:

Julie-
Posting it would be fine.
Here is a sample of what my daughter, Natalie, wrote from this exercise. Words from the Boggle list are italicized:

“I seek a set of leeks,” said a rabbit.

“To eat?” questioned an ant.

“Yes,” replied the rabbit. “I will eat them to loosen my tooth.”

“Do you think a tooth fairy will take your tooth?” said the ant.

“Of course! But I will need to send a hint.”

“Who is the tooth fairy?” wondered the tiny ant.

“I am,” declared a small, smiling creature in a hood. The tooth fairy disappeared, however there was still a tune in the air.

Thanks.
Anne and Natali

Isn’t this a great idea?

Posted in Activities, Email, General, Writing Exercises, Young Writers | 1 Comment »

How one family did it

I promised to share some of the processes our brave writing families went through to produce their lovely collages.

Isabella (9) and I really enjoyed this writing project! We got started when you first put it up, so we had lots of free writing, simmering, writing, simmering, writing time. Sometimes we worked on it when we were at home listening to Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” – very cliché, I know, but we both love it.

Sometimes we worked while eating pumpkin loaf (Isabella) and drinking hot tea (me) at Starbucks. We wrote side by side, individually, but then shared what we had done. So then, our next round involved taking off on something the other one had done. At one point, Isabella got out the rhyming dictionary to find some rhymes for fall and decided she wanted to do a whole piece that was just a bunch of words that rhyme with fall.

Once we had written a lot, we did some selecting, and I did a lot of revising and editing of mine. Isabella did some revising and editing of hers. We spent a long time talking about and playing around with how we would present our collage. Isabella loves collecting things on walks and she loves drawing, so we decided to intermingle our poems with both drawings and collected things.

Also, Isabella is the one who decided to change the font colors on some of her poems and meticulously decided which colors were appropriate for each thing. Then I was obliged to do the same with my poems from that group. Though Isabella handled the font color detail, I handled all the photographing and fiddling with the technical details of getting photos and drawings on the computer.

A few things I want to point out. Notice how long the process took. When you work on writing, it is a process that occurs over unhurried time. The best work is the result of simmering, talking, simmering, writing, simmering and gathering of more ideas, words and experiences. Writing will the flow out of that immersion in the material and language.
I also enjoyed hearing that the writing happened at home, at Starbucks, over hot drinks and pumpkin bread. Why not? Who wouldn’t enjoy writing more is treats were involved?

Thanks Isabella and Susie.

Posted in Contests / Giveaways, General, Young Writers | Comments Off on How one family did it

Rewrite a Fairytale

Here’s a quick writing idea that you can try if you are in a rut and want something to do besides freewriting.

Write a fairy tale with a new ending. Start with the familiar (any tale, like Little Red Riding Hood who goes to Grandma’s house and meets a wolf…) Then change it.

Here’s how to change it:

  1. Introduce a new item into the story: such as, a curling iron, a motorcycle, a packet of pop tarts…
  2. Introduce a new action: such as, dancing, fencing, climbing a tree, racing a Nascar racer, braiding hair, casting a spell
  3. Introduce a change in personality for a primary character: such as, a persnickety wolf, a dangerous grandma, a forgetful Red Riding Hood…

If you do these three things to the original, a new ending will automatically present itself!

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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

Inspired by Brave Writer

Check out this post that gives some ideas for what to do this year for writing. 🙂

Posted in General, Young Writers | Comments Off on Inspired by Brave Writer