Do you remember writing school reports when you were, say, twelve? Do you remember your teachers harping on the evils of plagiarism? Was your response to do what I did and take lines from a book, switch out words, change their order and call them your own?

I can’t blame twelve-year-old me. Despite all the plagiarism sirens, I don’t remember a teacher showing me how to take ideas from other sources and weave them into writing of my own.

Learning to use source materials to inform original writing is a tricky skill to learn, but it’s an essential one. Most kids, even homeschooled ones, will eventually find themselves in a situation that requires it, whether that means a 4-H report, a display for a history or science fair, an essay for a class, content for an online wiki.

How do you help kids write original reports, biographies, essays and articles on topics which others have already covered? How do you help them take the ideas of others and work them into their own line of thinking?

I’ve worked out a process that has helped my kids over the years. Stacks of Post-Its are involved. You could certainly do this with index cards or scrap paper, but the stickiness of Post-Its can be useful in the organizing process. It keeps the notes from flitting about as the kids sort and arrange.

This method works best when parent and child work together, at least initially, regardless of the kid’s age. It works great for younger kids. Likewise, when an older kid is beginning a daunting project, going through the first steps of this process with a parent can get them up and running. I even used this technique to help my oldest get started on his college application essays.

This process is heavily influenced by my own experiences as a writer. In the steps below, I’ve placed a few lines in italics to point out the writerly logic behind the process.

I’m laying out a series of steps in a continuous list, but please don’t go all eager-beaver and attempt them in a single sitting! Break them up, over several days even, according to the child’s interest and maturity. Life lesson to be learned here: a big writing project is easiest when divvied into manageable parts, and spread out over time. This process will show kids how to do that.

A method for writing nonfiction based on other sources:

• Research your topic. Help your child dig deeply into research before he or she starts writing. Read books, but don’t limit book selection to straightforward nonfiction. Look for books in varied formats, if possible: with graphics, fictionalized information, even comics. A variety of writing styles will open up the possibilities for the child writer. Also, look for interesting websites, films and documentaries. Don’t limit research to books.
• Narrow down the topic. A report on chimpanzees is likely to be too broad, for example. With too much information to cover, the child will have to skim superficially across the topic. Focus on a particular area of interest. How chimpanzees live in groups, perhaps. If the child can’t decide what to focus on yet, do the dictation and sorting steps below, and see what interests emerge.
• Close the books and move away from the computer. It’s much easier to convey ideas in original language, and from a more original perspective, if you aren’t looking at the source material.
• Have your child dictate as much as he or she can remember about the topic and write each idea on an individual Post-It. For this step, you can have the child sit beside you, or even better, encourage him or her to move around and even walk circles while recalling information about the topic. Write down each idea on a separate Post-It. A child can certainly do this step independently, but initially it’s very helpful for a parent to take notes while the child moves and thinks aloud. Being able to move, and not being nerve-wracked by the blank page can be a big help in the early stages of a project. The child does not need to relay information in any logical order. Encourage interesting, juicy details. The child may need to consult sources for specifics later, but get the general ideas down now, in his or her own words. Be prepared to consume plenty of Post-Its! Writing each idea on a separate Post-It may seem wasteful, but it allows the ideas to remain unfixed and, literally, movable. It keeps the paper’s structure flexible, which is important at the beginning of a project.
• Re-read the Post-Its and have the child add any points that seem missing. He or she may want to go back to the source material at this point to do a bit more research, but again, encourage the child to move away from the sources and dictate any new ideas in his or her own words. If the child comes across a source quote that is particularly powerful or interesting, you can copy the quote directly, making sure to attribute the source. Once you get to the writing phase, consider using no more than one apt direct quote per paragraph. That’s a good general rule of thumb. If the child has relayed an especially interesting story or detail, he or she might want to set it aside for the paper’s introduction. More on that later.
• Sort the Post-Its into piles that seem to go together. If, for example, the child is writing a report on the contributions of Eleanor Roosevelt, she might put notes about the formation of the United Nations together. Post-It stickiness comes in handy here: the child can literally stick together notes that seem to belong together. You may need to help with this sorting initially.
• Narrow these piles of Post-Its to three or four piles—unless the project is planned to be an especially lengthy one. If there are extra Post-its that don’t fit in any piles, put them aside, and save them. The child might not need these ideas for his or her project–or he or she might try to make an additional pile for some of them because they seem particularly important. It’s okay if many of the initial Post-Its ultimately get discarded; what’s important here is that the child narrows in on what he or she really wants to convey. This step helps the child recognize which ideas matter most to him or her. The most salient details tend to cluster together, based on the child’s interests and sensibilities.
• Help the child give each pile a title that sums up the ideas in that pile. If your child is writing a history of real-time strategy video games, for example, he might title a pile “Early RTS Games.” Write the title on a different-colored Post-It, or with a different-colored ink. Have the child put these title notes on top of the appropriate piles. These are the main ideas for the child’s paper. This is an important step; having a handle on the main ideas will help the child write a clear, logically organized paper.
• Read the pile titles aloud, and arrange the piles into an order that makes sense. Which pile should come first in the paper, which second, and so on? Each pile will essentially become a paragraph, or a series of paragraphs, in the final piece. Do the pile titles fit together into a cohesive whole? Is there a logical arc from the first to the last? If not, the child might be trying to convey too much. Would it help to remove one of the piles that doesn’t seem to fit? Or to focus on a single pile, and try to expand it into separate piles? The beauty of this process is that the child is organically creating an outline, according to his or her own ideas and synthesized sources—rather than using some author’s outline, which is what kids tend to do if they write while constantly consulting source materials.
• Working with one pile at a time, arrange the individual notes in each pile into an order that makes sense. Now the child is essentially creating skeletal outlines for each paragraph. Transitional words and sentences will probably be necessary; we’ll get to those in a bit. At this point, the child might want to return to source material to add details, but once again, encourage him or her to leave the source material before rephrasing.
• Choose which pile to begin working on first. I always encourage my kids to save writing their introductions and conclusions for last: those can be the most important sections in a piece of writing, and are often best shaped once the bulk of the piece is written. The child probably hasn’t made a pile for the introduction and conclusion anyway. Skip the introduction and have the child start with one of the piles. Kids don’t have to begin with the pile that will ultimately come first, either. Encourage them to dig into the section that seems the least intimidating. Professional writers rarely work in a linear order.
• Write a paragraph. Have kids spread out the notes from their chosen pile in order. Read the notes aloud. Each note is like a pearl on a string, and each should lead logically to the next note. What words and ideas are needed to transition smoothly from one note to the next? Sometimes several sentences need to be added. It takes practice to learn how to do this. Consider taking dictation from your child as he or she constructs the first paragraph or two from the piles–or take dictation on the entire piece if it helps your child focus on the content. You can add transitional sentences to additional Post-Its, if you like, but I prefer typing the paragraph on the computer at this point. It makes it easier to change the wording as you go.
• Move or discard notes that don’t fit where your child thought they would. The paper may change a bit as the child works on it. That’s okay; writers ultimately figure out what they want to write by writing. Keep the process flexible.
• After the paragraphs are finished, re-read them. Does the writing in each paragraph flow? Do all of the sentences and details fit with the original main ideas–the pile titles? It’s okay if those ideas have shifted, but your child should be able to verbally summarize the purpose of each paragraph in a single sentence: “This paragraph tells why _________.” “This paragraph describes _________.” If the lines and details in a paragraph don’t support that sentence, or don’t lead logically from one line to the next, go back and try to tighten them up.
• Write the introduction. (Or the conclusion; order matters less than the writer’s inclinations!) The introduction should captivate the reader, and compel further reading. Did your child find an interesting story or fact when researching? Start with that! Elaborate on the idea, and give readers a sense of where they’re headed in the rest of the paper. But don’t feel a need to explain the entire piece ahead of time, with a traditional school-ish thesis statement. That makes for rather dull reading.
• Write the conclusion. This was the part I always dashed off at the last minute as a kid. Wrong! A good ending should be more than a tacked-on summary; it should contain something unexpected too, which leaves the reader thinking. Why is this person or topic important? That’s what you want your readers considering as they finish reading. If writing a compelling conclusion seems difficult, try reading the final paragraphs of nonfiction that you and your child admire, and see how professionals do it. Your child might surprise you, though: after writing an entire nonfiction piece with this process, kids usually have a firm grasp of their topic and are able to offer real insight by the ending.

Phew! How’s that for a process? Seems like a lot of work, but it’s much more effective than having a kid simply sit down and blindly write, directionless. And the early steps are fairly painless–they’re just a matter of recalling interesting information, and getting something down on paper. I think the process gives the child a greater sense of control over his or her ideas: attention is given to deciding which ideas matter, and where they fit in the whole. The process helps a child learn to write more as professional writers do.

You can use a similar process to help a child write nonfiction which isn’t based on other sources. When I helped my oldest with those college application essays, for example, he simply brainstormed random thoughts based on the essay prompts–Reflect on a challenge you overcame through persistence. Describe your dream job. Tell us which aspects of filmmaking seem of particular interest to you and why–and I jotted his thoughts on Post-Its. Then he was able to look over the notes, and sort and discard as described above, and begin to develop outlines for his essays.

If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you know that I’m a fan of working with a child’s internal motivation. With writing, with everything. Therefore, I don’t recommend “assigning” a paper like this to a child. If you’re intrigued by the process here, just file this post away in your computer stacks. And when your kids come to you wanting to write that 4-H report, or that science fair display, or that wiki entry, or a history of a real-time strategy video games, you’ll have some ideas for how to help them get started.

And I’d love to hear back if you do.

It’s been a long time (like, um, a year), so here’s another writing ideas post. Finally. But first read the disclaimer and simply tuck this idea into your back pocket. It may not tickle your kids.

Mr. T is an info-maniac. His favorite part of his beloved National Geographic Kids Magazine is the “Weird But True” section, which is a collection of surely-that-can’t-be-true facts. Like “There are 294 different ways to make change for a $1 bill” or  ”A cloud can weight more than a million pounds.” Check out some facts yourself by clicking the magazine link above and scrolling through the “Weird But True” section in the right column.

When we discovered that Nat Geo has a Weird But True app for kids, I bought it for T and downloaded it to the iPod he inherited from one of his teen siblings. T loves it. Basically, it’s a series of interesting facts displayed on slides. Lots of vivid colors, cool fonts and interesting graphics. Click on the app link and view a few examples.

A few months back, T decided to focus on the Age of Exploration for our homeschooling group’s annual history fair. (For folks who doubt the learning value of video games, T’s interest was entirely fueled by his love of Age of Empires.) Knowing his admiration of what is weird but true, I wondered if T might want to make his own series of slides on the topic of exploration.

He liked that idea. And I think other kids might too. It can work for any topic a kid is into.

The project fell into two parts: finding the facts and making the slides.

Finding the facts:

Whenever T delves into any new topic, I do like any good homeschooling parent and head to the library. I look for good nonfiction–although I leave behind those awful, clearly-written-for-schoolkids-doing-reports books that are such a bore–and check out armloads. I also look for interesting documentaries, films, and websites.

As he started this project, whenever T read, or we read together, I encouraged him to add a sticky tab when he encountered a fact that intrigued him.

Eventually he began compiling a list. This was the slightly tricky part: how do you paraphrase ideas from books in your own words? This is such a thorny subject, for kids and parents alike, and such an important skill for kids to acquire that I’m planning to write about it in more depth in an upcoming post. But briefly, this is what we did: First, I asked T to simply remember as many facts as he could–without consulting the books–and I transcribed his words. It’s easiest, I think, for kids to rephrase someone else’s ideas if they haven’t just looked at the original document. They remember the notion, and not the precise words. For those he couldn’t remember, I looked at his stickies and reminded him with a loose suggestion. Something like: “You wanted to write one about how Captain Cook died.”

For the ones in which he did need to consult the original pages, we read them aloud and he tried to rephrase in his own words. When kids are new to paraphrasing from other sources, working with an adult can be a big help. I typed so T could focus on the phrasing. If his suggestion was too close to the original, I nudged him to say it differently, and more in his own style. Sometimes I played thesaurus and offered alternative words, and he chose which he preferred. Since I was typing, rephrasing became like a game, and I was surprised at how quickly T picked it up.

It may not sound like much, simply collecting interesting facts from a variety of sources, but I beg to differ. It’s a valuable skill. It encourages kids to look at the information they’re taking in–whether from a book, or a film, or a website–and to consider which parts captivate them. It allows kids to connect with other sources on a personal level. This same skill will, eventually, help kids write thoughtful and engaging essays, reports and reviews, if they choose to. It’s a great stepping stone into other nonfiction writing.

Making the slides:

Originally, I pulled up PowerPoint for T to use. He was making a slideshow, and slideshow=PowerPoint, right? Well. PowerPoint certainly wasn’t intuitive for T, and we ran into our first big glitch when he wanted to draw on a slide. I clicked around and tried to figure out how to draw in our particular PowerPoint version. Finally I just decided that it would be easier for T to draw in Kid Pix, a program he’s comfortable with, and then we could import his drawings later.

Silly me. Once we pulled up Kid Pix, I remembered that it’s designed to make slideshows. In a way that’s very intuitive to the kids in the program’s title.

We’ve had a version of Kid Pix around here since my college kid was little. I think we’re on our third. It’s a fun program, and mostly my kids have used it as a plaything, a way of making computer art and just messing around with images and sounds. When T was younger, he liked to make armies of monsters on the screen, and have them stamp each other out. He’d eventually cover the screen with layers and layers of images–and then he’d swirl them up. Crazy fun. I don’t think any of the kids have used it for a project before. But the beauty of that is that after years of playing with the program, T already had lots of experience when it came to making his slides.

(No, I do not receive a kickback from Kid Pix. I just think it’s a fantastic, creative, open-ended piece of software for kids. If you’re interested, you can get a 15-day free trial on their website. Do it!)

Honest truth: the first few slides were a bit of a slog for T. Making slides look and sound like he wanted them to was time-consuming. This is one reason why I love authentic audiences for kids’ explorations, like history fairs–even if it means I have to organize them. T had a deadline, and he wanted to have something exciting for the fair. I encouraged him to keep at it, and eventually he began to see all the slide-making possibilities that Kid Pix offered. Then he got really into designing slides and dug in on his own.

Here’s a link to his slideshow. (Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the sound to export correctly, so we left it out. Too bad: the sound added a lot, and I’m sorry that you don’t get to hear T’s death groans on the Captain Cook slide.)

Fast Tube by Casper

The show is, how shall we say it, nothing show-stopping; it’s just a kid’s first foray into slideshows. And honestly, the part of his history fair exhibit that got the most attention was the challenge that required visitors to sort fruits and veggies into Old World/New World categories. (Did you know that although tomatoes and potatoes are New World crops, eggplant–from the same plant family–is an Old World crop, from Asia? Can any botanists out there explain?)

Still, T had fun making the show, and he’s amped up about using Kid Pix for other projects. It’s all about mixing his words with design, which is, as I keep mentioning, a skill for the new millennium.

If your kids try something along these lines, please leave a comment and let me know!

It’s been a long while since I’ve written one of these what’s-got-me-worked-up posts.

Finished knitting projects! Finally! Last year, sometime mid-summer, my knitting mojo got lost. But thankfully we were reunited in late fall, in time for me to dig out the sweater I’d started for my hubby, and to finish it in time for Christmas. I’ve dubbed it the Hoppípolla Pullover, in honor of the Icelandic band Sigur Rós. Ever since he first saw the band’s documentary Heima, in which they play their music in obscenely gorgeous settings in their native land, often wearing similar yoked Lopi sweaters, Chris has asked when I’d be knitting him his own Icelandic sweater. Apparently the response should have been Why, by Christmas 2011, Sweetie! The random shirtless child in the following photo looks like he dropped in from a Sigur Rós video himself; too bad Chris didn’t have his guitar for the photo shoot.

For lack of other photos, I’ll decorate this post with a few other recently finished project shots. Ravelry site is down; links to come.

An article in print. I started this post in show-off mode; may as well keep going! I have an article in the March/April issue of Life Learning Magazine called “How Do Kids REALLY Learn to Write?” Gee, does that sound familiar? Yep, it’s a rewrite of the post I wrote back in January. Wendy Priesnitz, Life Learning’s editor, kindly tweeted to me after reading the post, and asked me to share it in the magazine. What a world we live in now: on any ordinary morning an editor might send you a totally unexpected message in 140 characters or less, and suddenly your day is made! The article is a more thought-out, clarified version of the blog post, influenced in no small degree by your thoughtful feedback in the comments.

Anne Lamott’s new book. It’s just a few weeks away! This one is a follow-up to Operating Instructions called Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son’s First Son. There’s a nice LA Times interview about the book here. I’ll never forget having Anne sign my copy of Operating Instructions at a reading on my very first Mother’s Day, in May 1993. I’d gone into labor with H the day after Mother’s Day the year before and, as I inelegantly tried to explain to Anne as she signed my book, I’d had to be a mother for a whole year before earning my Mother’s Day badge. I figured she’d appreciate the sheer injustice of it all, and after seeming a tad confused by my nervous babbling, she did. More Twitter talk: Anne’s on Twitter now! She manages to be funny and endearing and poetic in 140 characters. Do I scroll ahead when I see her photo show up in my feed? I do.

Another good book. Devotion by Dani Shapiro. A memoir in the form of a spiritual quest. I’m just a short way in, but it seems a fitting read for the Lenten season. (Not that it’s about Christianity; it’s about finding a spiritual center.)

A mesmerizing video. This film of making pesto by hand puts me in a trance. It’s so slow that it almost verges on parody; the, how shall we say it, pestaiola dries those basil leaves like they’re the bare bottoms of a beloved one-year-old. But by the time the gnocchi hits the table–make that by the time the gnocchi is bestowed upon the table like an offering to the gods–I’m ready to pull out my mezzaluna.

Resolutions update. As much as I miss being here with you more often, the decision to post less in an attempt to write more has been a fruitful one. I’ve written that article; I’ve made fine progress on my e-book; I’ve written a few conference proposals and am thigh-deep in a new article. I’ve been writing lots and lots and lots and if I’m atwitter about anything, that’s it.

So, what has you all worked up these days?

I’m reading Adam Gopnik again. This time it’s his new book, The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food. Gopnik on food and family! I’m reading it slowly, savoring it like it’s a little goat cheese crottin. Some of it is the deep-thinking Gopnik-ish stuff that has me skimming, feeling too dumb to follow–the history of the restaurant, for example, gets awfully philosophical–but much of it is simply delicious. May I share a few lines, about Gopnik looking into a beehive with a keeper?

“The beehive sits at the center of the roof. Dave opened it, cautiously, and we looked in together. It was like looking down into a New York office building from above: several thousand bad-tempered coworkers racing around and muttering.”

Yes. Exactly. I will never open a hive again without seeing secretaries.

Some of my favorite sections are the “emails” that Gopnik addresses to Elizabeth Pennell, a nineteenth-century British food writer. These sections are casual and chatty and full of Gopnik’s adventures in making the likes of butterscotch pudding and a henhouse-worth of roast chickens, including “the lemon-up-the-bum chicken beloved of British cooks.” It’s like sitting at Gopnik’s table with a glass of Rhône, and watching him simmer and yammer.

But I’m getting distracted. What I really want to focus on is an idea Gopnik writes about in one of his Pennell missives: “the rule of three.” First he uses it to summarize cooking:

“But mostly, the good things to eat take three steps. Three steps to pan sauté: the sauté, the reduction, and the finish. Three steps to make a cake: the liquids, the butters, and the dries. Three steps to stew…”

Then he starts applying his rule of three to art, and this is where it gets interesting.

“I suspect that this is so because the rule of three really expresses the three stages that are always at the base of any good thing we make, from soup to David Salle: there is first the raw thing, then there is the transformative act, and then there is the personal embroidery. The rule of three applies, because it captures an enduring truth of life, that, at best, people always have three terms to play with: what I take from nature, what I’ve learned from my tribe, what I do myself: nature, culture, me. Something borrowed, something done, something only I can do.”

Reading this, as I pedaled away on my stationary bike, had me instantly thinking of another favorite writer, Michael Chabon. The truly devoted Wonder Farm reader may remember me writing this, way back in my year of excellent essayists:

There’s something about the way Chabon combines his Pulitzer Prize-winning style with the most base cultural references that captivates me. In his essay on Legos—one that had particular resonance for me as the mother of two Lego-loving sons—Chabon writes, “Time after time, playing Legos with my kids, I would fall under the spell of the old familiar crunching. It’s the sound of creativity itself, of the inventive mind at work, making something new out of what you have been given by your culture, what you know you will need to do the job, and what you happen to stumble upon along the way.” That making something new of what you have been given by your culture is a big part of Chabon’s genius. It’s precisely what he does in these essays, again and again. (It’s the same sort of creative, culture-twisting that I love to see my kids fiddle with, that I’ve written about in my Waldorf Guilt posts.) Chabon gives hope to a woman of his age who aspires to write, but worries about the conceit of such an intellectual aspiration given the amount of time she spent watching Brady Bunch reruns as a child.

Rule of three! Chabon starts with not nature, per se, but the canon of literature. Then he adds what his culture has given him, which might be Legos, or might be (as I noted in that post) Squeeze Parkay margarine, Wacky Packages, or the Planet of the Apes television show from the 70s. Then he loops it all together as only he can, with wit and lyric.

And then, still pedaling, I suddenly thought of a third writer. (Because, of course, there must be three when writing of threes.) The third? Mr. T. Last week he struggled to come up with something new for our writer’s workshop. We bandied about lots of ideas, until he finally came up with this scenario: a Colossus shows up at the Downtown Oakland Whole Foods. Written up as a newscast. An excerpt:

Reporter: So what exactly happened in there, Mary?

Mary: It was horrifying! The Colossus fell from the ceiling from the second story elevator platform and landed on hundreds of orange boxes! Then a sample-lady offered him a chocolate heart for anyone special in his life! He threw the sample-lady into a fruit salad display and ate the chocolate! And no, Tommy, you can’t have a Popsicle just because you saw a Colossus!

 Reporter: Sounds intense! So Mary, what did the Colossus look like exactly?

Mary: It was almost sixty feet high so that it was skimming the roof! It was made entirely out of metal!

Tommy: Mom, it wasn’t just metal it was bronze! It was AWESOME!

Mary: I just hope there aren’t any more Colossuses!

Tommy: Colossi! Mom, honestly!

I’ll spare you the part in which the Colossus starts eating shopping carts, including one with a strapped-in baby. (Never fear: The baby shoots back into its mother’s arms from a hatch in the Colossus’ stomach.) I will tell you that Mr. T had a splendid time writing this story. And you know where this lane in the grocery store is heading, don’t you? Rule of Three. Mr. T started with the canon: Greek mythology and tales of the Colossus of Rhodes. Then he added something given to him by his culture: shopping at Whole Foods (curse of the privileged urban child.) And then he shook it all up into his very own concoction.

It’s a light, fluffy concoction, yes. A fun trifle to write and read aloud to his friends. But I think it’s more than that, too. T. is making art on his own terms, as Gopnik does, as Chabon does. He’s reflecting on the canon, applying modern life and twisting it all in his own way. When we simply ask kids to write straightforward, formulaic responses to literature, or to nonfiction topics, we’re forcing them to skip a step. We don’t allow them to reflect on how the original material relates to their own worlds, and their own ideas, and the resulting writing is typically flat. It lacks the inspiration of art.

Which is why kids should be allowed to write about the banal trappings of their culture, if that’s what inspires them. Whether that be Plants Vs. Zombies or Quentin Tarantino films or Littlest Pet Shop figurines. Teenagers writing about Romeo and Juliet should be allowed to reflect on gangs and Facebook-official relationships. If you doubt that this sort of writing is valuable, allow me to direct you back to Daniel Pink’s book A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future. Do you remember those aptitudes that Pink says we’ll need in the future, specifically the aptitudes of symphony and story? (If not, my synopsis is here.) Those are the aptitudes that kids will develop, if allowed to romp in the playgrounds of culture and their imaginations.

Mr. T is planning a whole series of tales of Greek monsters in modern-day locations. I can’t wait to read his spin. It’s fun, but it’s important too. After all, as my man Gopnik writes, “The rule of three is the rule of making.”

It’s very satisfying to write a post that brings so many of you out for a tea party in the comments! If you haven’t been back to the discussion for the How Do Kids REALLY Learn to Write? post, hop on over. You’ll find fantastic insights and experiences shared there.

One of my most essential suggestions in that post was the final one: Help your kids find meaningful, authentic reasons to write. And what was my first example of how you can help make meaningful, authentic writing opportunities for kids? Start a writer’s workshop. If you’ve been reading along here for any length of time, you could have predicted that one. You know that I mention writer’s workshops often, you know that I’m a great fan–yet suddenly I realize that I’ve only written about them at length here once.

So, let’s talk about writer’s workshops.

I’m so convinced of the effectiveness of writer’s workshops and writing clubs that I’m writing an e-book on the topic. (Still cranking away on that! It should be finished in the next few months.) From the introduction of my project:

One of the easiest ways I know to conjure an audience for a child’s writing is to start a writer’s workshop.

Conjure is an apt word here because, in my experience, writer’s workshops can be almost magical in their ability to motivate kids’ writing. I’ve facilitated a variety of groups over a dozen years, working with kids as young as four and as old as seventeen.  Twelve years in, I’m still surprised at how a workshop can inspire a child’s desire to write. I see it in the kids from my current group, overheard at the park, asking each other, “What are you reading at the workshop tomorrow?” I see it in the ten-year-old who emails, begging me to hold our bi-monthly workshops every week, “Please!!!!!!!!!” I saw it last year in the teenage boy who dutifully cranked out regular installments of a Twilight series spoof, because the other workshop kids cheered and whined for them. In the kids who arrive at my house on workshop day, and scurry off to a corner to scratch out the unfinished ending to a story—because they don’t want to miss the party. In my own son, who hollered about how much he hated writing at seven, but months later, after we’d started our first workshop, could be found at the kitchen table, scribbling away at his own Captain Underpants comics before he’d even finished his morning glass of orange juice.

A writer’s workshop may not have such an effect on every child, but I’ll make the audacious claim that it will have such an effect on most kids. It’s a powerful motivator, and it’s hard not to use magic as its metaphor. I’m not the only one to think so; I’ve heard facilitators of other workshops and writing clubs for kids make similar claims.

Yet, for all it offers, a workshop is a fairly simple gathering to facilitate. We’re talking big payoff with minimal effort. Really, all you need to provide is a place for kids to share their writing. And a little help in cultivating a nurturing atmosphere.

There are many ways to format a workshop. In classrooms, teachers typically present a short lesson on craft, often using professional writings as inspiration, and then there’s a longer session of writing time, with sharing at the end. Many home-based workshops follow a similar pattern: the facilitator offers a fun prompt, and kids write, and share what they’ve written.

We do things a bit differently in my workshops. Kids write whatever they want: on any topic, in any genre. They do the actual writing at home. Then they read their work aloud at the workshop, and the group offers feedback. We generally do a quick, fun writing exercise together midway, but bulk of our time together goes to offering feedback on those written-at-home projects. I like this format because it allows kids to take time on their writing, and it offers more freedom in how kids write. Many still dictate their work to parents, which they can easily do at home; some like to write at computers; some enjoy writing bit by bit over the two weeks between our meetings; some prefer dashing off something by hand on their way to our gathering. Many choose to write longer pieces, and offer their latest installment at each meeting.

When kids write at home, it leaves more workshop time for feedback. And that, I think, is where the magic lies. As I mentioned in that last post, people (generally) write for connection and response. A writer’s workshop fulfills that in bucket loads: A child sits at the front of the group and reads his or her writing. And the other kids listen! And offer positive feedback!

That, my friends, is gold to a writer. I know I never tire of getting feedback on my own writing.

You’ll notice that I specify positive feedback. I’m a big believer in positive feedback. I think that hearing what we do well is more instructive than some folks realize. Getting feedback on our strengths teaches us what our strengths are–and many of us don’t recognize our strengths. Positive feedback teaches us what we do well, and encourages us to keep doing it.

A big chunk of my e-book focuses on offering feedback, because it’s such an essential part of a workshop–and it’s also the place where a workshop can go wrong, and turn unproductive. We do, eventually, begin offering constructive, building feedback in our workshop, but we delve into it slowly and with care. But truthfully, you could host a workshop that allows only positive feedback, and the kids would develop as writers.

What never fails to amaze me is the insight that kids can offer about writing. They really begin thinking like writers. At our last workshop, one ten-year-old said, “I like how you took the comedy of somebody messing up a newscast and made it real.” Another said, “I found it interesting that the snatchers couldn’t get the kids, which made me want to hear more of the story.” They comment on everything from specific words to character motivation to plotting. Once, a teen responded to a girl’s Christmas memoir by saying that all the details made him feel like he was looking into a snow globe. (I practically welled up at that one.)

You can get a glimpse into how a feedback session can blossom into a full-blown writerly discussion in my post Still Talking Literature.

A Few Benefits of a Writer’s Workshop:

• Workshoppers experience one of writing’s essential purposes—the opportunity to convey ideas in words to an audience.
• Having an audience to write for can be highly motivating.
• A workshop audience provides feedback on one’s writing. Feedback isn’t always easy to come by.
• The workshop setting encourages kids to write with an audience in mind. Writing for a particular audience can help writers develop clarity in their work.
• The workshop exposes kids to a variety of writing genres and styles. Very often the kids influence one another’s writing.
• The workshop provides authentic deadlines for writing, which can be helpful for writers of all ages.
• A positive workshop environment can help kids recognize their personal strengths as writers.
• A workshop setting values creativity over formula, content over correctness, practice over theory—all qualities essential to developing writers.
• The workshop helps kids understand that writing is a process, that the work is malleable. Writing can always be changed and improved, if the writer chooses to.
• Discussion about one another’s writing helps kids learn how literature works, in an authentic, meaningful, interesting way.
• For homeschooled kids, the workshop provides the audience often missing in a homeschool setting. For schooled kids, the workshop allows for opportunities that may not happen in a classroom: more freedom to write creatively, and in-depth dialogue about kid-generated writing.
• And a benefit not to be underestimated: the workshop shows kids that writing can be fun.

I’d love to keep the tea party going. A few questions to get the chitchat started: Have your kids ever participated in a writer’s workshop or other sort of writing club–or have you hosted one yourself? Was the experience useful? Have you participated in a workshop yourself? Or, have you ever considered hosting a writer’s workshop? What’s kept you from doing so?

Mr. T is just beginning to type his writing on his own.

Warning: some of what follows may sound like heresy to traditional educators.

Recently a reader of this blog sent an email asking for advice. She’s a homeschooling mom, and she wrote after spending time with other homeschooling friends, and hearing how they teach writing to their kids. Basically, these parents have their kids work daily at their writing. Younger kids draft a sentence each day and then combine them into a paragraph at the end of the week. An older child writes a paragraph each day, and then combines them into a traditional “five-paragraph essay.”

My reader writes:

“I wonder if this approach is going to encourage a love of writing and an ability to establish an authentic writing voice of one’s own.”

She then went on to describe some of the writing that her kids do, based on their interests. I won’t describe the details, to protect my reader’s privacy, but she writes,

“Their writing experiences are few and far between, but in my opinion, so rich, so full of voice and purpose…”

Here’s what she wonders:

“Can these kinds of few and far between writing activities be “enough” if they are rich enough and gradually become more frequent?  How can a family keep a sense of play and joy and authenticity in writing while making it a habit, too?  And how can a parent know when it’s time to push a little more and when it’s time to wait?  And am I being overly cavalier and irresponsible to think that teaching my kids paragraphing skills can wait a while?”

There are so many good questions here, enough to fill a chapter in a book. Rather than try to address this reader’s wonderings in an elegant, cohesive way–which would have me tapping at my computer here for days–let me offer instead some random thoughts.

• The notion of learning through routine practice is mostly a school notion. Practicing small pieces of a larger skill day after day is a way of ensuring that a large group of children will eventually learn that same skill. The assumption is that the child will learn the multiplication table, or the rules of grammar, or the parts of the body if he or she works at them repeatedly. The teacher can’t be aware of learning that happens outside of the classroom, in daily life, so all learning gets focused into a lesson format. Many of us who grew up going to school have unwittingly become convinced that a person needs this sort of routine practice in order to learn something.
• Adult-driven, routine practice-type learning rarely takes the child’s interest and motivation into account. In fact, in most cases, the child isn’t terribly engaged in this sort of practice. He or she does it simply because it is required.
• On the other hand, when a child’s interest and motivation are there, that child can often pick up concepts and skills rather quickly. Repeated practice isn’t necessary. Your daughter figures out how to multiply mentally because she wants to win at Yahtzee; your son understands how different ancient civilizations affected one another because he enjoys reading The Cartoon History of the Universe.
• This is not to say that repeated practice doesn’t have a role in learning. Repeated practice when taken on by choice can be the deepest sort of learning. When, for example, a child does that skateboard trick over and over to get it down; when she draws manga characters in the margin of every paper in her path; when she keeps strumming her guitar because she wants to be able to play Hey Jude through the finish. The child learns in these situations because he or she is motivated and the engagement is constant. In this case, practice leads to deep learning, yet it doesn’t feel like practice to the child. The child is simply doing what he or she is compelled to do.

So, how do these ideas apply to writing?

If you’re concerned about helping your kids develop writing skills for their futures, I have a few quotes for you.

Me, squinting and looking sheepish.

I did not write much in 2011.

That realization sort of stuns me. I didn’t recognize it until the year began to dwindle and I glanced back. I spent a lot of time last year working behind the scenes of my writing, without actually writing. I futzed under the hood, you could say, without actually driving the car.

And how, you might ask, did I do that for a year?

I spent the first three or four months of the year researching why writing matters. This was, ostensibly, a means of starting a book chapter called (what else) “Why Writing Matters.” I can’t, I figure, expect parents to read a book about helping their kids with writing unless they’re convinced that the endeavor will be worth their while. So I simply set out to do a little research, and found myself falling into a rabbit hole of studies, reports, articles and books on how writing is becoming more important than ever in the modern world. And concurrently found other studies, reports, articles and books bemoaning the fact that writing is being more neglected than ever in most classrooms. It’s a fascinating, horrifying story, and I couldn’t move on from it; I just kept reading, gathering notes and pulling out my hair. I managed to collect it all into an article query, and wrote an introduction to the article, but haven’t yet had a magazine take me up on writing the actual piece. It’s an important story, and one I’d still like to tell.

I spent another few months preparing workshops which I presented at a homeschool conference and elsewhere. I’ve given workshops before, but these were two completely new ones, and it surprised me how much time they took to put together. Good news: those months of research wriggled their way into both workshops. Suddenly I had more evidence, more grit for parents, to work them up about writing. Giving the workshops was exciting–there’s nothing like sharing ideas with others and getting immediate, tangible responses. (And hugs, even.) The give-and-take with participants gave me all the more insight about kids, parents and writing for my book project.

Still, it wasn’t writing.

I spent another two months redesigning my blog. This was perhaps the most frivolous, not-related-to-writing distraction of all. I just wanted my blog to look more like the vision I had in my mind; I had no idea how much I had to learn about code and such to make that happen. It was a fulfilling little dalliance, though, and it had to be good for the synapses in my forty-six-year-old brain. Now I’m redesigning my homeschool support group’s website, so the experience wasn’t all shallow self-indulgence.

Looking back on how I spent 2o11, and how much I wrote, I realize that I worked on just three projects: that article query, my e-book for parents on facilitating writer’s workshops (still unfinished) and this blog. That’s it.

Sigh.

I also realized something else. There are two things getting in the way of my writing.

1. my book project
2. this blog

I know, I know! How can writing a book get in the way of writing? But a book project is nothing if not big. I knew that writing a book would take years. It’s been almost three years since I got the original audacious idea of writing it. In that time I’ve done a lot of thinking, outlining and note-taking. I’ve even done a lot of writing. But I can see now that I am years and years away from anything resembling a completed book. I just don’t have the time to make it happen faster. I’m still a homeschooling parent, which implies a certain level of busy.

I’m also a monogamous-project person. Ask any of the moms in my homeschooling group, who see me knitting at the park week after week. I work dutifully at one project and finish it before I even swatch for another one. It’s a little ridiculous. I knitted a single sweater coat for nine months until the thing reached my ankles. I’m not sure what this tendency says about me. That I value finished projects over process? That I can’t multi-task? That I’m tunnel-visioned? True. True. True. But it’s also true that if I want something I will work for it. Stubbornly. Single-mindedly. Mulishly.

I thought I wanted to write a book. I do want to write a book. But what I realize, now, is that I want even more to help other parents with their kids’ writing. And if I put all my time into writing a book that won’t make it into another parent’s hands for years and years, then I’m not going to be helping anyone for a mighty long time.

Then there’s the fact that my project single-mindedness hasn’t allowed me any other writing for almost three years. So many times an essay idea has whispered in my ear, and I’ve ignored it, knowing that I’d never get a book finished if I got sidetracked with other whims. But, oh, how I’ve missed writing essays and articles! I’ve missed breathing on them and shining them up until I could see my reflection in them. I’ve missed sharing them with my writer friends, and re-writing them, and re-writing them again, and finding potential markets for them, and sending them off, with held breath and crossed fingers. I’ve missed that enchanted period before the rejection arrives, when the unlikely is possible.

I haven’t written a new essay in almost three years. I stopped writing essays just about the time I started getting them published.

Suddenly I’m feeling a little sad about that.

I’m not giving up on my book project. I’ve just decided to let it become the afghan that I knit at on the side, for years, without worrying about when it will get finished.

In the meanwhile, I’m allowing myself to dally. I’ll keep working at my e-book on facilitating workshops. I’m excited about the e-book model: the shorter format, the self-publishing angle. I’ll try out this first idea, and if it goes well, I very well may release other portions of the book in my brain as e-books. I love the idea of potentially helping other parents sooner, rather than later.

And I’m going to get back to writing essays and articles. I’ve pulled a few simmering-too-long ideas right up to the front burners. Feels good.

But back to that other writing obstacle: this blog.

I’ve kept up this blog as doggedly as everything else I do. A post a week, most weeks. For a long time I kicked myself for not writing more. I was convinced that I needed to post more often to build up my audience. And how I wanted to build my audience! I kept waiting for the month that my blog would take off, and attract masses. But, no. There have been no take-offs or other statistical pyrotechnics. My blog audience has grown slowly and steadily over the months and years. What else did plodding, deliberate me expect? I have a relatively small yet loyal readership. Every month there are a few more of you. I am finally beginning to take satisfaction in the fineness of that gift.

But a post a week here has been too much for me. As this current post is making all too evident, I don’t write short. Wish I could, but I can’t. So even posting every eight to ten days meant that blogging took up a good chunk of my writing time.

No, I’m not giving up the farm. I’m just putting my eggs in the basket that says that most of my readers will keep showing up, even if I only post every two weeks or so. That’s what feed readers and email subscriptions are for, after all.

I’m also hoping to focus my posts here on writing with kids, and passion-driven learning because those are the topics that matter most to me. I’ve finally figured out that I’m not Soule Mama, you know? I may drop in some atwitter posts now and again–heavy on photos, light on text–because I don’t want to things to get too impersonal. But I have a better sense of what my mission is, and what I want to share here.

So. All of this has been a bloated, navel-gazing introduction to my new year’s resolution: In 2012 I will write.

Wish me luck.

I went away for a writing retreat with friends this weekend.

For years we’ve gathered at the coast, but this time we found ourselves on the backroads of Northern California. Instead of looking out over beaches, we had buttes. And a most changing landscape–for a landscape that at first seemed unchanging.

We were astonished by snow.

We drank strong coffee and wrote words on the backs of tickets. Then we made poetry. (An activity that’s as fun to do with kids as it is with adults, inspired by Susan Wooldridge’s Poemcrazy.)

We watched a heron and a hawk face off from a distance of ten feet, and stare each other down for hours.

We ate well. These pumpkin steel-cut oats were delicious (and will be making a comeback in my kitchen on Thanksgiving morning) and Heidi Swanson’s surprising salad with kale, coconut and farro, from this cookbook, was worth pulling from the fridge, meal after meal.

We stayed warm with a wood stove.

We wrote postcards to each other, from fictional and somewhat emotionally-unstable characters.

We walked alongside fallow rice fields. Then we went back to the cabin and blasted I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got while making barley risotto.

And we wrote. Which is what we’d set out to do.

Getting away like this, once a year or so, matters more to me than I probably realize. It’s about being with friends and being without responsibilities, yes, but it’s also about feeding my artistic self, and keeping it going for the rest of the year, when the time allowed for it comes in fits and starts rather than days.

It’s important for parents to feed themselves this way, especially homeschooling parents.

If you can’t get away for a weekend, maybe you can do it for a few hours. For about fifteen years now, since Lulu was a baby, I’ve gone out to work on my writing in a cafe once a week. Usually Wednesdays. My evenings out have evolved into first eating at a somewhat dive-y Indian spot, where all I have to do is walk in and smile and they write down my order of chana masala and roti. I eat my dinner over an inspiring read (lately Adam Gopnik’s new The Table Comes First.) And then I walk a few doors down to a cafe and work at my writing.

Wednesdays have become a highlight of my week. No matter how busy life gets, I know I’ll have a few hours to indulge my writerly side, and it fuels me. Like that kindling in the wine barrel, in that photo up there.

Chris also takes a night out, generally to rehearse with his band. I’ve known him since (before!) he was a teenager blasting his ears out in a garage band, and I’m only too happy to help keep that part of him alive. (Seeing him play live always makes me feel like a teenager again, even without the thrift store spike heels and leggings.)

Our weekly evenings out have been, I think, one of the smartest things we’ve done as parents. Sometimes it’s hard: the one left at home does all the dinner-prep and parenting duties for the evening, even more of a task when the kids were younger. And I find myself saying no to other weeknight social opportunities because I don’t want to give up my writing night. Still, it’s worth every trouble. Chris and I are helping each other remain creative people, in the midst of a very full life.

What seems secondary, but must be just as important: we’re showing our kids that our creative selves matter. That a week isn’t a week if you don’t find time for writing or music-playing in between dragging out the garbage and doing the laundry. That indulging your creativity is just something you do, like brushing your teeth and exercising.

How do you feed your creative side, in the midst of a busy life?

(P.S. If you’re here via last weekend’s link at Simple Homeschool, welcome! Please consider jumping in and joining the conversation in the comments. That’s where the action is!)

So I have a new home page. Maybe you’ve seen it? You can check it out here, or by clicking about me in the menu above my header.

The home page is at patriciazaballos.com, where the blog used to live. The blog now gets moved next door to patriciazaballos.com/blog. I’ve been assured that the change shouldn’t effect my blog feed, meaning that if you subscribe via email or RSS feed, you should receive updates as usual. Hope so. Please let me know if it’s not working out for you. Resubscribing may be necessary.

Apparently I’ve become something of a code geek. Not that I know much, but I’ve definitely learned to speak a little PHP and CSS in the two months I’ve spent redesigning the blog, and setting up that home page. I thought that the home page would be fairly easy to put together, but it took even longer than the blog redesign, simply because I had to really tweak the blog template to make the page look as I wanted it to. Do you have any idea how complicated it was to set up those buttons linking to Twitter, Facebook and Flickr? I could tell you a whole story populated with image sprites and sprite generators and Firebug menu item numbers. But one sentence is boring enough–suffice to say that those cute little buttons took about three hours of my life.

Perhaps I’m a slow learner. Nevertheless, the whole endeavor brings us to the topic of do-it-yourself learning.

My home page isn’t just DIY in design; it’s DIY in content. Which has me thinking.

The page is, I suppose, an attempt at professionalizing what I’m doing these days. I used to be a credentialed professional, but my teaching credential is long lapsed and honestly, my teacher training has very little effect on my current life as a homeschooling parent. Less and less as time goes on.

Instead, I’ve been working towards my own goals, outside of institutions and without credentials to prove my accomplishments. Is it audacious of me to assert myself as a writer when I’ve only had a few pieces published? Does the fact that I was paid for some of those pieces make me a professional? If I’d spent two years earning an MFA in Creative Writing, would that earn me more respect than the twenty years I’ve spent studying writing on my own? Does it make a difference that I write in some fashion most days, that I think and read and look at the world through the lens of a writer?

I’ve also begun listing my speaking engagements on that page. I’ve been paid for some of those engagements, but not all. Does that make me a professional speaker? I’m likely hired, in part, due to my  yellowing teaching credential, although what I speak about has little to do with my experiences as a credentialed teacher. Instead, I speak about what I’ve learned from my kids in our lives as homeschoolers, and my own research, and my own experiences as a writer. A quasi-professional writer.

It’s a home page mostly based on my own DIY learning, and that feels a little cheeky of me. But at the same time, what kind of a homeschooler would I be if I didn’t value DIY learning? Do I think my kids are lesser learners because they spent most of their childhoods learning outside institutions? Absolutely not! I think they’re learners in the truest sense of the word. Their DIY learning has had a profound effect on who they are as people, and it certainly hasn’t hindered them when they’ve chosen more traditional, institutional learning for themselves.

I believe in DIY learning for my kids, and I believe in it for myself. I can’t really confer on myself a credential or a degree, I suppose, but I can make myself a home page! I can announce to the world what I’ve been doing and where I’m headed.

And that’s what my little home page is all about.

Oh, what  a crazy time it is. Mr. T turns ten today, and Lulu turns sixteen on Halloween. Multiple cakes and celebrations are involved. Also, I’m trying to fabricate a Thor costume primarily from duct tape. But that’s the sticky stuff of another post.

I haven’t managed a post here in a few weeks. But after writing my last one, on making reading and writing enjoyable on a daily basis, I undertook a little experiment. For a few days I tried to note whenever I saw Mr. T involved in an act of reading or writing. There is no way I caught every occurrence; who knows how often the kid picks up an atlas when he ought to be putting on his pajamas, or labels a map before running out to the backyard?

THREE DAYS OF READING AND WRITING: AN INCOMPREHENSIVE LIST

Reading

Lots of independent random reading. A Cartoon History of the Universe, Volume 3. Assorted comics and graphic novels. The Story of the World, Volume 4. (T found this one on a shelf in our office and picked it up when he saw that it covered WWI and WWII, two eras in which he’s interested but we haven’t explored together. Cracks me up that he chose to immerse himself in what some would consider a textbook.) House Mouse, Senate Mouse by Peter J. Barnes.  Scholastic Almanac 2011 and National Geographic Kids Almanac 2011. Interesting thing about T: he doesn’t tend to read many novels, although he loves comics and graphic novels. For a short while I worried about that, until I realized that for every novel he doesn’t read, he probably reads a dozen nonfiction books. He especially loves atlases and almanacs, and all manner of science and history books. At the library, I check out armloads of books that might intrigue him and leave them lying around the house. I strew them, as Sandra Dodd would say. I’d wager that a giant chunk of T’s knowledge has been gleaned from strewn books that he’s picked up and read.)

Family bedtime read-aloud: Wildwood by Colin Meloy. (Because Mr. T’s parents are Decemberists fans and we lived in Portland for a time.)

Daytime read-aloud: Adopted by Indians by Thomas Jefferson Mayfield. This is a bit of an aside, but I have to share: Mr. T and I are exploring California history this year, and going on monthly trips to historic sites with a few other families. We’re reading this book along with our study of local native people. So interesting! It’s the true story of a Texan boy who came to the Gold Rush with his family, and was taken in by a local tribe. Apparently Mayfield never told his story until just before he died, and a teacher-friend transcribed it for him. It’s fascinating to hear about San Francisco before it was even called San Francisco, and to hear what the Central Valley looked like when it was practically untouched.

Bedroom audiobook: The Fellowship of the Ring by Tolkien. This is the book of the month for T’s book group. T would never have the patience to read it at this point, so I checked out the audio version for him. Sixteen disks! Actually, T often “reads” his book club books via the audio version. Is this cheating? I don’t think so. Can T engage in a discussion on the book at his meeting? Yep. Seems like that’s the point.

Car audiobook: The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly. T almost always chooses the audiobook we listen to in the car; I really wanted to hear this one so insisted on picking for a change. What a fantastic first-person narrative! Reminds me a lot of the young female narrator in the recent film version of True Grit. Calpurnia uses lots of wonderful, old-fashioned words that should never have become lost to us. Big surprise: T likes it, especially the admiration for Darwin and the natural world that Calpurnia and her grandfather share.

An information packet about Fort Ross, a local historic site and the location of an upcoming living history overnight that T and I will be attending. T’s taking a class with other kids who will be attending the trip. Reading the packet was an assignment for the class, yet T kept dragging his feet about getting it read. Instead of nagging him, I read the packet aloud. Suddenly he found the content fascinating and it prompted all sorts of discussion. And I reminded myself that reading aloud is sometimes what it takes.

Reading about Lego Ninjago online. To some parents, I suppose, this could seem like frivolous commercialism. The thing is, T isn’t reading because he’s lusting after the toys. (Although he wouldn’t mind a few of the small sets for his birthday.) No, what interests him is the Ninjago world and all its inhabitants and their interactions. (How do I know? I asked.) It may be online reading, commercially produced, but still, T is reading and absorbing and considering the information. Pretty much the same as he does when he reads an interesting book.

Practice questions for upcoming Geography Bee. My young geography freak is considering entering a local bee, so he and I took turns reading and answering questions from last year’s bee. And yes, he puts me to shame.

Discussion while reading The Elements by Theodore Gray. T loves this book, and picks it up regularly. This time, as he was reading, he piped up: “You know why I like this Elements book? It has really good writing. It’s complicated, but they simplify it so much that you can understand it. It feels like the writer is talking to you, like when he says, (reading aloud): If you find this section too technical, feel free to skim it–there isn’t going to be a quiz at the end.” A casual conversation about writing style in a scientific book, begun by a kid? Love it. (Another aside: Recently I asked a friend’s 13-year-old if there were any nonfiction books with writing she admired, and she also named The Elements. Good stuff.)

Writing

a variety of Google searches:

1. Many searches for images of Thor, as Halloween costume research. One led us to the very fun site of comic book artist Chris Giarrusso. Fantastic place to visit for comic-loving kids.
2. A search for the word used when meeting with a king, which neither of us could recall. (“Audience”).
3. A search for a map of “the ancient world”. T looked this one up independently, and it led him to a geography quiz site, which led to a good 45 minutes of reading and answering questions online. (See, that’s just one example of reading that I missed documenting above.)

Are Google searches writing? Most definitely, I would argue. In order to search successfully, you need to refine your goals and tinker with your terms. The ability to find information is crucial for kids in this digital world.

Continued work on his nonfiction piece on Lego Universe for our Writer’s Workshop. T is just beginning to type some of his writing on his own, and is very motivated to do it. Exciting.

The Workshop itself. Practically two hours of discussion about writing! Also a writing exercise: Think of something you like to do, and make a list of how to do a great job at it. T’s subject? Playing Lego Universe, of course. (Third aside: yes, yes, I’m still working on that e-book about how to facilitate writer’s workshops! Will get it up here in the next few months!)

A questionnaire for developing his Fort Ross character, required for the Fort Ross class. Not writing he wanted to do, and he did a minimal job.  I had to encourage him to move beyond one and two-word responses. (What do you look like? Handsome!) Still, I didn’t push too hard; I think that would have only made him dislike the activity altogether. This goes to show the difference between assigned projects and self-chosen ones, like the Lego Universe writing mentioned above. I’d hate to think of how T’s writing might (or might not) be developing if he were in school and not given many opportunities to write on topics of choice.

Many lists of invented characters and maps of invented worlds. I find these scattered around our house like dust bunnies.

Writing and responding to friends in the text box while playing Lego Universe.

A thank you postcard to his grandparents.

* * *

Funny thing is, these were three very busy days, three days in which T and I had minimal time working together. Still, I’m amazed at how much reading and writing actually took place. I also notice that most of the examples here fall outside the scope of traditional reading and writing instruction. Reading comic books and Lego websites? It’s reading! Googling Thor and messaging while gaming? Writing! There were times in which I helped T out, scaffolding the learning for him: reading aloud when he didn’t want to read something, finding audiobooks when reading was challenging, not pushing too hard on a class assignment. Also, there were many small acts of reading and writing: casual conversations, Google searches. Sometimes I think we parents don’t notice these small moments, but a reading and writing education can be built on them.

Consider noting the reading and writing going on in your days. It can be surprising! I’d love to hear a few random examples of how reading and writing creeps into your lives. Your examples will help readers better understand the point of my last post: You can help your kids love reading and writing every single day.