Easy Writing Exercise Number 5

One of the marks of the truly educated person is not that they can spout off random facts and memorize details, it is that they are able to see the links between areas of knowledge. All knowledge is connected, each discipline we study adds understanding to other related disciplines. The study of philosophy can bring clarity to art or history. Grasping mathematical concepts aids us in understanding science and the world we live in.

In school we are often taught to think in terms of… Algebra, Biology, English Lit etc…and it can seem each class is an entity unto itself. That is a false view of the world however and we should rejoice each time we see our child make a connection between disciplines. It is being able to recognize and develop these connections that leads to progress and gives us fresh insights into problems that have stumped us.

That is the big picture. Working with metaphors is a small, manageable exercise in making connections between unrelated subjects. When we spend time working with words and making up new combinations it helps us to think outside the box, to let our imaginations run a bit and find a fresh perspective. So, while we may do these exercises to help our children develop into better writers, there is a larger goal being worked on here. We are also helping our children pay attention and notice connections. In the words of J.D. Casnig, “The Metaphor reminds us that the universe is full of cousins.”

Okay, enough of that, let’s move on to the exercise. (If you haven’t read Easy Writing Exercise Number 4, you need to back up and read that first, it is foundational for the exercise that follows.)

When we did exercise Number 4 we were writing metaphors that were phrases or sentences. In this exercise I would like to challenge your student in two ways.

First, if you have begun to keep a notebook of metaphors, or if you have a list of some metaphors that you have spotted during your hunting in Exercise 4 I want you to go back over that list and highlight those metaphors that are a bit tired from overuse. For instance, a knife in the back, might have been quite clever when first written but now it is a cliche. Once you have identified those make a pact that you will avoid using them for the next 3 months in your writing, instead try to come up with some new fresh metaphors of your own. Revisit Exercise 4, only this time make your list with more intentionality. Look at your list of overused metaphors, identify what is being communicated, and then see if you can come up with a new, fresh metaphor that would work better.

Second, try developing a metaphor through an entire paragraph rather than just a phrase as we did earlier. There are times when a metaphor brings clarity to a difficult subject and it is beneficial to develop it a bit further. In the following lines from Shakespeare we see him comparing our lives to a drama being enacted upon a stage.

“All the World’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances.

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,”

(William Shakespeare, As You Like It. Act 2, Scene 7)

As you can see it would be possible to continue to play with this metaphor for awhile. If you have children who love sports that is an easy place to begin. Compare their life, friendships, or family to their favorite sport or team. A child with a perennially messy room may want to use that to illustrate some other facet of their life. Growing a garden, riding a bike, or doing the laundry could all be used for an extended exercise.

A word of warning to the Type A personalities out there. I would resist getting hung up on whether or not your child is mixing metaphors, simile’s, comparisons, or idioms. Yes, there are differences, and depending on the age of your child you may want to go into them, however, the point of this exercise is to improve their writing by using a new tool. In exercising that tool they may cross a few lines not sticking strictly to the narrow definition of a metaphor, let it go for now. If they are using comparisons to bring clarity and creativity to their writing we’ll call it a success.  (Of course if they are actually using a mixed metaphor you may want to point that out, and if you have no idea what I’m talking about…don’t worry about it.)

Simple Writing Exercise No. 3

One of my favorite books is The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by Jon Scieszka. If you haven’t read the story you need to get a copy from your local library…or buy it. It’s a keeper. It’s the story of the Three Little Pigs told from the wolves perspective. Full of laughs and twists that you missed in the original, this retelling brings new life to the story.

I use this book in my creative writing classes and it’s one of the most rewarding classes I teach. Each year I’m amazed at the stories this one book generates. (One year I had a student tell the story of the Three Little Pigs from the perspective of a worker at Home Depot who was selling them the building supplies and listening to each of their plans.) After reading the book we make a list of other fairy tales that everyone is familiar with. As soon as we have a good list we begin to talk about the different characters in the story and how the story would be different if someone else were telling it.

Can you imagine Cinderalla told from the evil step-sisters perspective or perhaps the Giant telling us about that criminal Jack who climbed a beanstalk and broke into his house. Using this book as a guide children can create great stories out of stories they are already familiar with.

For many children telling a story from a different perspective can be quite challenging. At first you may just get a retelling of the original story with very little deviation. The idea of telling a story from another’s perspective may take several illustrations before they catch on to the idea. If they just don’t seem to get it, don’t sweat it, just put this exercise away for a time and come back to it down the road. That’s the nice thing about homeschooling, we don’t have to stick to a strict timeline and this exercise is fun in 4th grade or high school so don’t push it if it isn’t making sense to your child. Just enjoy the story and move on.

After you have finished your story you may want to follow up with another book by the same author that involves the retelling of several other fairy tales. I’ve found that it’s best to save this book for after your child is done with their story. The Stinky Cheeseman uses so many different fairy tales that students could get frustrated that the author has used up all the good stories and they can’t think of another one to tell.

Simple Writing Exercise No. 2

This exercise involves a basic knowledge of grammar. If your children have enough grammar knowledge to identify a noun, verb, and prepositional phrase then they are ready for this.

I would suggest doing this exercise with something your children have already written: a book report, a story, or a summary of a history lesson. (Or you could start out with the example below…) Explain to your child that varying how a sentence begins will add interest to their writing. When we first learn to write we generally are taught to think in terms of a subject followed by a verb that might have a direct object. The boy kicked the ball. There is nothing wrong with this, but as you can see in the following example when all of your sentences follow a similar pattern it can sound too simple.

Matt kicked the ball. The ball hit the window before Jacob could catch it. Matt and Jacob tried to hide under the porch steps. Mother found them and sent them to their room.

If you underline the first word of each of these sentences you will see that they all begin with a noun. Ask your child to choose one of the sentences to rewrite only this time they must start the sentence with a prepositional phrase or a verb. They may have to add more details to make the sentence a complete thought.

Before Jacob could catch it, the ball hit the window. or Hiding under the porch steps Matt and Jacob waited to see if they were going to get caught.

By changing how a sentence begins we are forced to rework it and improve it.  As children learn to mix up how they begin a sentence they will naturally move into more complex sentence structures which will add interest to their writing.

I would suggest that as your children write you occasionally ask them to underline the first word of each sentence and check to see how they are doing. If they have begun nearly every sentence with the subject ask them to rewrite 2 or 3 of the sentences.

If you have done Exercise No. 1 with your children this would also be a good time to have them revisit that exercise by replacing three common words (man, said, house) with more specific, descriptive words (knight, whispered, hut).

Simple Writing Exercises No. 1

This simple exercise can be done over and over again with a wide range of ages

Write the sentence, The man walked into his house. on a piece of paper.

Now, have the following conversation with your child about the sentence. That sentence is too vague to work well in a story because every person reading it has a different idea of the man and of the house. When we write we want the picture in our head to be communicated to the reader so that they are picturing the same thing. When I read the sentence I pictured a tired, grumpy farmer shuffling into his farmhouse after a long day in the field. What did you picture? Hmmmm… not the same thing. Well, when we write we want to choose our words carefully so that our audience can see what we see.

Help your child come up with a list of words that could be used instead of man (farmer, hippie, clown, doctor etc.) and a list of adjectives that could be used to describe the man. (scruffy, handsome, old etc.) Do the same thing for the word walked and the word house. Once you have your lists its time to play.

Now have your child come up with several clear, descriptive sentences about the man walking into his house. By playing with the lists you should be able to come up with several different options. Generally, the more ridiculous and silly the sentences are the more younger children enjoy them. That’s fine, it gets them playing with language. You can challenge Jr.and Sr High School student to recreate the sentence so that they create a mood that is creepy, sad, or joyful.

That’s it. Don’t drag out the exercise. I’ve generally found that kids aren’t ready to quit and want to ‘do another one’. It’s your choice, but stop while they are still interested. Over the next few months continue to pull out this exercise, just mix up your starting sentence.

Some other ideas to try… The dog greeted it’s master. The girl dropped her toy. The car drove by the restaurant.

The child got on the ride. The family ate dinner.

3 Keys to Great Writing

Caleb with our newest family member, cousin Hope

Imagine, if you will, a family that has just had a new baby. These new parents never talk to the baby and somehow manage to keep the baby from most conversation until he is about two years old. At two, they decide it is the correct time for baby to begin to talk. Each day, for fifteen minutes, they have talking lessons. They don’t speak to the baby the rest of the time. These well meaning parents spend a lot of money and research and find the perfect talking curriculum. Unfortunately, they quickly become frustrated with their child’s inability to speak.

Now If these parents came to you for advice I’m sure you would be horrified that they hadn’t been speaking to their baby all along. It is likely you would tell them to dump the complex ‘talking curriculum’ and just start conversing with their child. You would reassure them that teaching him to talk is really not that complicated and if they would just start to make conversation a regular part of his environment, he would absorb (learn), most of the necessary skills. These well meaning parents might be shocked. Surely it can’t be that simple. After all, there are speech therapists and experts, people who have degrees in how to teach babies to talk properly. This is of course a ridiculous scenario. Yet, don’t we have a tendency to do the same thing when it comes to teaching our children to read and write. Do we complicate the process with too many expert opinions and complicated curriculum’s.

We all know the process babies go through when they learn to talk. Ideally babies are surrounded by a loving family who continually converse with them and cheer over their every attempt to communicate. We know that a baby learns language skills by being around conversation. We don’t teach a baby sentence structure, but by three they can put together a rather complex and grammatically correct sentence. They have learned, by example, without much conscience effort on their part. We accept this as the natural way of things. We know that children begin to acquire critical language skills even before they are physically able to speak.

We can draw several parallels between a child learning to speak and a child learning to read and write. I think if you incorporate these into your school day, over time, you will observe a great improvement in your child’s writing abilities.

We are often like the above parents when it comes to teaching writing. We mistakenly think that writing begins when our child is five or six. Whether we are aware of it or not, we have already been laying a foundation for their writing in their early years. Just as an infant needs to be surrounded by conversation a child needs to be surrounded by good books…great writing.

Key One to growing great writers: Children become good writers when their environment is filled with good writing. I know, you are sick of the mantra, but I don’t think it can be emphasized enough. Reading good books to our children, taking them to the library regularly, buying them books of their own, and encouraging their own reading, is the best foundation we can lay for them to become proficient writers. A child who has been read to daily will have assimilated (learned) much of what he needs to know to write. Just as a baby absorbs the way we speak, our children will be absorbing how to tell a good story, illustrate a point, or give instructions. All of this learning will be done with very little effort on their part. So, the first and most important step in teaching your child to write is reading to them and introducing them to outstanding writers. After you have done this, the rest of the process will be greatly simplified.

Key Two to growing great writers: Children need lots of time and opportunities to write, and this writing needs to have a purpose. Just as an infant is forever playing with sounds and saying the same word over and over our children need practice and time to play with language. Now I sympathize. I can hear many of your now saying, “but my kid never wants to write.” While I would like to have all our schoolwork be fun, the reality is, some of it is work. However, while not all writing assignments may be fun, they should have a point.

Don’t load your kids up with busy work just because they need practice writing. When writing has a purpose, it is much easier to get excited about it. For instance, writing a paper about the last field trip that will just be going into a file of mom’s may feel like busy work, but a letter about the field trip to Grandma gives the assignment some purpose. Having your children make up shopping lists, take down messages, write out invitations, or write a story to be published in the monthly newsletter gives the writing activity a sense of purpose and focus. We all put more effort into something if we have an audience, so make sure that most of your child’s writing has an audience.

Key Three to growing great writers: Provide a safe environment with plenty of realistic praise. Would you want to write a poem and share it in front of our next parents meeting? Realize that the same insecurities that you feel at that prospect, your kids feel too. Writing exposes us, so we need to make a safe atmosphere for our children to write in. We need to help them see that they have something worthwhile to share.

Remember when your child was learning to speak and you cheered over each new sound and word, how you would try to get them to show off in front of friends and relatives. Well, do the same thing with their writing. When they write a clever poem or story make a point of sharing it. Let them hear you bragging about their writing to other adults. When your child was an infant and mispronounced words you still cheered them on and applauded their attempts. Isn’t it obvious that if you talk up how well your child is doing in writing and what progress they are making that they will in turn feel more confident and positive about the writing process? That they will be more likely to improve?

Now, a serious word of warning. Your praise must be realistic and earned. You can almost always find something to praise, and with an elementary school child I think you can praise just about every effort. However, children are not stupid, they will quickly figure out if you are gushing over their work when it is undeserved. They will come to distrust your opinion if you praise everything they do, even when it is an obviously poor effort. So be honest in your praise. This is especially important as your children get older. If they are handing in written work that is obviously beneath their capabilities then you must call them on it and demand a rewrite. Kids are quick to find ways to wiggle out of the hard work and while we need to praise their abilities that is not the same thing as letting them off the hook when they are not handing in their best efforts.

So here it is in a nutshell. Fill your children’s lives with great books, provide as many opportunities as you can for purposeful writing, and be sure to provide a safe environment and to praise their efforts.

How Much Help is Too Much Part 2

This post is a continuation of yesterdays. Specifically addressing the issue of where the balance lies between helping a later elementary school child too much, and leaving them so frustrated that they give up.

With my 4 boys, who were all very different, I still watched them pass through 4 stages as they became more independent learners. In early elementary school children are mastering all new skills, reading, writing, basic math. In later elementary school they are solidifying these skills together into useful tools that they don’t even have to think about to use. In Middle School they are moving away from dependence on you as their teacher and are learning to work more and more independently. In High School they are independent learners, able to be given an assignment and follow through on it with very little outside help.

These stages are not distinct and each of my boys moved through them at a different pace. The stages also had a great deal of overlap. Most growth happens that way, as our children move into a new stage they still bop back periodically to the old one. One moment a preschool age child will want to be totally on his own and tell you adamantly, “I’ll do it myself.’ and in the next moment they want to curl up on your lap and be your baby. The transition takes time and is a back and forth movement until they are ready to totally move into that next phase. It’s a natural and healthy way to move forward, as they ‘try out’ being more independent, and then retreating back to the security of Mom’s lap, eventually needing that security less and less. Not allowing your preschooler to revert back, pushing them to ‘not be a baby’ generally creates more of the babyish behaviour which is rooted in insecurity and fear of the unknown. Just at the time when they are reverting back and need some reassurance…they feel rejected. I digress…but the concept is the same with children moving through stages in their learning development. Children don’t learn in a straight line, finishing one skill and then moving neatly on to the next. If you were to graph it out t’s not a straight line going up. It’s more of an up and down, with a general upward trend.

In early elementary school there is a tremendous amount of complicated learning going on. Everything is new and children are learning to read, write, work with numbers, how to sit still etc. You are laying the foundation on which everything else will be built. Obviously the first step in any academic learning is being proficient at reading and writing and this is when they are learning that. This is a time of a great deal of hand holding. We need to be patient and realistic in our expectations. Reading is a complicated process…be reassured that just about everyone masters the skills needed, but for some the journey is a little longer than it is for others.

Timothy

My eldest son, Tim, despite consistent instruction was still slowly sounding out 4 letter words at the beginning of third grade…we continued on with reassurances from my sister in law, who is a teacher, that he didn’t have any problems but was just a boy…and at the end of 3rd grade he was reading at a 9th grade level. My second son was reading fairly fluently by the end of kindergarten. They each just moved at their own pace. Since my eldest has graduated from college with Honors I can only assume that being a ‘late’ reader didn’t harm him in any way.

However, during those early years with Tim I needed to ‘bear the burden’ while he was mastering his reading skills. He loved books and could sit and be read to for hours. He also loved to ‘write’ although I did a great deal of the physical writing. He would tell stories, ‘write’ poems, and record what he had learned in history and science. I would have him (painfully) write the first sentence or two and then I would act as his scribe. While he was moving toward being an independent reader we kept alive his love for books and learning. He had a bright and active brain that was constantly engaged with the world around him. He loved going to the library and would check out the limit (32 books) each week. It was really during this time I saw the value in teaching him at home. I knew that in school he would be ‘behind’. Tim was a perfectionist and I knew in that environment he would have felt insecure and that he was a failure. No amount of reassurance from me that he was intelligent and capable would have been able to change the fact that most of the children surrounding him were reading. I was so blessed to be in a situation where he could not just learn at his own pace, but excel.

The next stage toward becoming an independent learner, which is really what I wanted to cover in this post, started after Tim had learned to read and write. We’ll say sometime in 4th grade. This is the age where I see many parents make a crucial mistake. They feel they need to keep pushing and moving their child forward. (This need to push is especially prevalent in homeschoolers who often feel they have something to prove.) Now is not the time to push, but to allow your child to bounce back and forth between being an independent learner and being dependent on you. Now is when they are solidifying all the skills they have been learning up to this point so that they can use them without conscious thought.

Let’s take reading. Your child has just mastered the basics and can now read. So where do you go from here. The natural response of most parents is to have them read harder and harder books. I’ve often heard this discussion in libraries and book stores. A child is showing his Mom a book he wishes to get and after a quick glance she says, ‘No, that one is too easy for you. Go pick another.’ Then she will pick one up and say, ‘How about this one?’ and after a glance the child will tell her ‘No, there are too many words on the page.’ or something to that affect. And so it goes. Actually, the child is in the right in this discussion.

Now that the child has done the hard work and learned to read, it’s time for the reward…and the time to solidify those skills. Now children need to practice, practice, practice. They need to read books that are too easy for them, and lots of them. Your child needs years, not months, of practising their reading skills. 80% of our reading is the same 1,000 words. All of these words will be in those books that seem to be too easy for your child. They need to encounter these words over and over and over again until reading them is effortless and automatic. They need to develop confidence in their reading abilities. They need to be able to zip through a book so that they are enjoying the story, not struggling with the words. The point is not that they are reading hard chapter books and all of the realtives are impressed with your ablility as a teacher...the point is that your child loves to read, that they can’t wait to pick up that next book. Is that love ever going to happen if every book they read is just a little too hard for them, if reading is always a bit of a struggle? Do you continue to do things that make you feel inadequate and that are continually hard?

During the late elementary school years, once your child has mastered the basics, encourage them to read…whatever THEY want. Take them to the library and the bookstore and follow their lead. Eventually they will choose to move on to the harder chapter books, but there is no rush. This time of reading lots of too easy books is critical. A great deal of learning and skill building is going on. Think of a baseball player who spends hours each day and week going over the basics…swinging the bat exactly the same way over and over, fielding the fly ball endlessly; or the concert pianist who can play the most difficult of compositions yet spends hours on basic scales. There is a reason these skilled professionals do this. They are wanting these basic skills to be effortless, to have the muscle memory that they don’t need to think about it. When I read I don’t think about it, I’m caught up in the story, not sounding out difficult words. That is what we want for our children…to move beyond having to think about the reading and to be able to focus on what they are reading. This is the part of reading that happens in late elementary school.

Now during this time we are still ‘bearing the burden’ with our children. While my son was busy mastering his reading skills and reading books that were ‘too easy’ his mind was also ready for some harder material. So….I continued to read to him. I actually read outloud to my children until they were through middle school. If I was reading to a younger child in bed at night it was not uncommon for the older two to wander by and say…oh, I remember this part…and lay down to listen. It’s hard to fit 4 large boys in one bed, particularly when they were getting close to 6 foot, but it was known to happen. I read their science and history to them because they were ready to take on concepts in those subjects that was beyond their reading level. So I was still ‘helping’ a lot during these years.

Writing was much the same. During the early years children struggle to form each letter, by high school they can take notes during a lecture…thinking about what they are writing and not about forming letters or spelling. So during later elementary school they know the basics but they need time to practice. I found that having the boys write for 30 minutes a day was helpful. For most of that time they could write about whatever they wanted. (I got some great stories out of it.) I also allowed my second son, Levi, to do a lot of his writing on the computer as this seemed to be so much easier for him.

Levi also gravitated toward non-fiction in these years. At the library he generally checked out books on a topic he wanted to know about, and his writing reflected this. He listened to me read him stories, but when he was choosing his own books he rarely picked up fiction. His writing reflected that. My goal was to have the boys writing, enjoying it, and able to express themselves. I, at this age, rarely gave them specific writing assignments instead allowing them to write about what they were reading and/or thinking about. With Tim that meant stories, with Levi a page on a polar bear. I know many families use and enjoy the books of story starters or journalling ideas you can get at Teacher Supply stores, and if they work for you great. For us it seemed to work better to just let their own ideas take the lead.

The point is to get them writing. Now, again, I often helped ‘bear the burden’. While I have met girls who will write pages of rambling thoughts and stories my boys quickly reached their limit. When Tim and Levi were in late elementary school I also had 2 younger sons…I would read them their history all together and then have them tell back to me what we had read about (this was how I handled comprehension…no boring paragraphs to answer questions about.)

Now doing this brought out all of their personalities. Tim would listen carefully for all of the details, Caleb would listen even closer because he lived to remember something that Tim had forgotten. Levi would be more interested in the people and why they did what they did…he would have more questions than answers. Joseph, who could not be still, would be rolling around on the floor seemingly inattentive, but then he could, in order, repeat back all that I read. (On an interesting side note, if I tried to get Joe to sit still it seemed all his energy went into remaining still and he couldn’t remember anything. If you have a kinetic learner, let them move.)

After this bit of narration they would record what they were learning in their notebooks. Joe, who was quite young would ‘illustrate’ what we had read and then have me write captions. The older boys would start writing and then after about a paragraph ask me to write for them. I normally did. Why is simple. If they knew that they were going to have to do all of their writing on their own they would condense what they had to say making their summary as short and detail free as possible. Knowing that I would be helping out, they were much more thorough. Since this was a history, not a writing lesson, I wanted them focused on the history and to do as complete a job with that lesson as they could.

I could go on with each subject, but I think you get the idea. Late elementary school is a time to solidify what has been learned, whether addition facts or phonics. It’s a time to practice, practice, practice so that as they begin Jr. High and High School they will have the necessary foundation to do more difficult work. They are making those early lessons their own, gaining confidence, and learning to enjoy learning. As their reading, writing, and math skills become more and more automatic they will need you less and less, but they will still need you. Their minds and understanding are still ahead of their reading and writing skills so they need you to bridge that gap. Like the pianist in our earlier example, they are practising their scales, but are still able to enjoy hearing a full concerto if you play it for them.