Roots of Learning » pre-writing strategies

Planting Seeds

admin — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 01:10:52 +0000

Does your child have a ‘seed’ journal? This is a simple concept, but can grow into wonderful pieces of writing! Simply have your child keep a journal of interesting events, people, descriptions, ideas, etc. – any “seed” that he or she may one day use in a piece of writing. The seed journal can be a physical journal, or it can be a file on your computer. Either way, encourage your child to add ‘seeds’ regularly and to review their old ‘seeds’ when looking for ideas or ‘meat’ for their writing.

Happy planting everyone!

- Heather

Language Arts Resources from Discovery Education

admin — Sun, 17 May 2009 15:36:40 +0000

I just stumbled across a set of videos to support Language Arts Education from Discovery Education. Downside: they are not interactive. Upside: they are free, short, and interesting.

- Heather

Alleviating “The Fear” that sometimes accompanies writing…

admin — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 02:07:48 +0000

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