Engaging Way To Make Writing A Blast
TNT!
Possibly one of the most challenging subjects to inspire and teach in our homeschool journey, has been the writing process. It seemed as though we were off to a terrific start in the kindergarten years, watching their penmanship develop and take beautiful shape. Then, once those lovely letters and words were mastered, their interest in building sentences and expanding on them became, at times, volatile. Much like dealing with sensitive TNT, my little writers soon began to explode when faced with creating rough drafts, second drafts, and dare I should say...final drafts. Sometimes it was the long sighs, or small gruff, and at its worst- the tears.
The process just seemed far too long for them and what I began to discover, was that they didn't actually mind putting pencil to paper, they just struggled with producing cohesive ideas.
For them, writing creatively was a bit too open ended. I thought this was contradictory being that their creativity in games, play time, and creations were off the charts, but I began to understand that they definitely had ideas, just so many they didn't know where to start! Instead of getting discouraged, I challenged myself to make a helpful writing aid to ease their frustrations...and mine.
KABOOM!
Being that we were in our fun thematic unit all about fireworks, I was inspired to create a writing aid that would engage them, and get their ideas exploding. What I put together proved to light them up with ideas to expand on, a better attitude towards writing, and most important- laughs!
What they were able to produce from the writing aid had me OOOH-ing and AWWW-ing over their creative writings, and more, their new found joy towards it!
So here's hoping that if you have a struggling young writer or perhaps just need a fresh spin on the writing process, that they can find this aid a blast!
Get the complete Fireworks Lesson Plan HERE!
Make Your Writing Explosive!
To make this writing aid appeal to their interests, I knew I was going to need to make it POP- literally! I gathered up some simple supplies, already on hand, and got to work creating the firework tubes. Making the board interactive for this exercise was made quick and easy, by utilizing a portion of a balloon at the end of each tube.
Next, I labeled each tube with a story element and for some added practice, I labeled a couple tubes with a part of speech we were also covering in our lesson. You could assign the tubes to serve as any element or language topics you would like to practice, or include within their writing. Once the tubes were prepared, I inserted strips of paper into each tube that had an example of a setting, characters, plot, etc. along with some confetti dots.
Then, I dressed up the board with colored cutouts that provided a quick definition or explanation to review what the paired firework meant. Last, I taped all the elements to the foam board, and in a flash, was ready for creative writing!
Each day, my writers used the writing board by popping the fireworks to reveal their story elements, that they would then use to grow their ideas on the paired writing sheet I prepared.
We used the board to inspire 3 days of creative writing stories. On day 4 and 5 for writing, we worked together to edit and revise the week's stories they created.
This writing aid board not only had them practicing great story writing, it had them excited to reveal their next story element each day- which I would say is DY-NO-MITE!
Do you have any writing tools you would like to share? I'd love to hear them! Be sure to leave your idea in the comments.
and
Comments