The worst case of this “fear” that I’ve ever witnessed: a fourth grader who would actually pull his hair out when given a writing prompt. The child was an otherwise strong student – and particularly verbal – so I could not imagine that he had nothing to say (everyone has something to say). The ‘format,’ the physical act of writing (which he found uncomfortable), the blank page, was just too stressful for this kid. This was before we all had recording devices on our phones, ipods, laptops, etc. But we did have cassette recorders. As a pre-writing strategy, I used a cassette recorder so that he could record all sorts of ideas and thoughts, play them back, re-record, etc. until he came upon “THE” idea that merited his writing. This took so much of the ‘edge’ off of the writing task for this one student that he became one of the better writers in my class, all without going bald. If you have an auditory learner, try this method. I’d love to hear from others who have tried it!
– Heather