Monthly Archives: September 2015

Direct quotes bring writing to life

Posted on September 28, 2015 | Leave a comment

Child writingAdding more details to writing almost always enhances it. One kind of detail students should be encouraged to use is direct quotes.

Direct quotes can be conversation between two or more people. Direct quotes can be the inner thoughts of a person. Direct quotes can be onomatopoeia sounds that a person hears—a dog’s bark, a siren or a plane’s engine.

But most children don’t use direct quotes.  They use indirect quotes. For example, they write, “Joyce said that I could come to her party,” instead of Joyce said, “Why don’t you come to my party?” With indirect quotes readers do not hear exact words or sounds. Instead they hear the words or sounds filtered through the mind of the narrator.

Is there a meaningful difference? Definitely! Suppose you hear the screeching of tires and the thud of a car crash with your own ears. You become hyperalert, perhaps scared. You might feel a chill ripple through you. But suppose your friend tells you about an accident near her home. She tells you there were awful sounds and she was scared. In the first instance, you are there. You are hearing the sounds yourself and the impact is palpable. In the second instance, the events are second hand. You are not hearing the sounds yourself.  The impact is weak.

When we write we want to let readers experience as much as possible through their own senses, not through a character’s or a narrator’s. One way to put readers into a situation is to use direct quotes. Let’s look at how some students have used direct quotes.

Here a sixth grader uses the exact words of a teacher. The student could have written, “The teacher said the cookies tasted good.” But isn’t hearing the exact words of the teacher better?

Today we presented our cookies to Mrs. Smith, and she eyed them carefully. She took a bite, and her face lit up. “Why, this cookie beats every cookie I’ve tasted,” she bellowed. “Can you make me these again?”

Next, we hear the thoughts and the shouting of a child written by a fifth grader.

I woke up in the morning, running down the stairs, feeling grown up. I’m turning seven!

“Mom! Dad! Mom? Dad?” I ran upstairs and downstairs, searching all rooms. “Where is everybody?” I thought. “Did they forget my birthday?” Two thousand questions about my birthday ran in my head!

I wondered if my parents were in the garden. I rushed upstairs, changed my clothes, ran downstairs, and opened the door. Where was everybody?

“Mom! Dad!” Silence. “Mom? Dad?” Still silence.

Another fifth grader wrote about a boy who cared for a baby dragon.

Weeks later when the dragon was bigger than Cody and had grown wings, Cody said, “We have to get out of here. I’m endangering the entire village.”

“Yes, you’re right. We do,” the dragon said.

“You can talk. Whoa! Listen, it’s getting late. I better get home,” Cody said.

As Cody entered the village, a mystic traveler was listing dragon names. One name caught his attention: Phoenixheart. Suddenly Cody sprinted to where his dragon was. “Your name is Phoenixheart.”

“Cool name, but I have something to admit. I can’t actually speak. I’m just forming words in your mind,” Phoenixheart said.

Did you notice how we, the readers, learn that the dragon speaks at the same moment that the boy does.  We are there, hearing the conversation with our own ears.

Next, a fourth grader tells about his birthday party. His direct quotes are short, but notice how real they sound.

We played tag in the downstairs hall, but it didn’t last long because my mom yelled, “That’s enough!” After that, we played magnetic darting. When everyone kept hitting the hall wall, my dad said, “Go outside and play.”

Finally, a first grader shows that even seven-year-olds can use direct quotes effectively as she summarizes a book she read.

One day Nate the great was in his garden weeding when Oliver the pest came over. 

“I have lost a weed,” said Oliver. 

“No problem,” said Nate the great.  “You may have all of my weeds.” 

“But this was my weed,” said Oliver the pest.  “I bought it at Rosamond’s adopt-a-weed sale for a nickel.  It’s name is Superweed.  It is small and scraggly,” said Oliver. 

“Very well, I will take your case,” said Nate the great.

Once kids see how powerful direct quotes are, they want to use them all the time.

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Posted in dialog in writing, narrative writing

Adding numbers enhances student writing

Posted on September 19, 2015 | Leave a comment

When I help students revise essays, we are always adding details. On their own, children rarely add enough details to their writing. They think that being general is adequate (“We flew up north” as opposed to “Mom, Dad, Lily and I flew to New York”). Sometimes the student is lazy and wants to get the writing done quickly. Sometimes the student is unwilling to hold a pencil and writes the shortest sentences possible. Sometimes the student is in a hurry to play with friends or to watch video games.  Students need to be taught that adding details is important because it makes writing far more interesting.

One kind of detail that is usually easy to add is numbers. But a  common problem with using numbers is that the child may not be sure of the exact number, so he says “some” or “a few” or “lots of.” Children want to be honest, and they think saying “twelve” students attended the party when maybe only “ten” did is dishonest. They need to be taught that it is more important to use an estimated number than it is to be absolutely accurate in student writing.

Here is a fourth grader’s description of a woven basket containing coasters. Notice how the numbers he uses add truth to the essay.

This short artistic cylinder is made from five rows connected by knots. The lid has a woven spiral with holes in between. It is 4 ½ inches tall with a diameter of 5 ½ inches. The circumference is 16.5 inches and the depth is 3.5 inches. The interesting lid is a woven spiral with five small, tan and orange shells in the middle. On the bottom of each smooth shell two rows of tiny rough teeth show. The teeth are also shiny, and the shape of the shell resembles a football.

Here is a sixth grader’s introduction to an essay about starting middle school. Notice the variety of ways this student uses numbers: to describe grades, to name a date, and to count buses, teachers and classmates.

Daniel and I have passed fifth grade and now we are starting sixth grade at Duluth Middle School which opened on August tenth, 2015, welcoming three loads of buses on a mild summer morning. On the first day I greeted my five teachers and hundreds of classmates and learned about my schedule.

Here is a first grader’s description of how to play hopscotch. She uses numbers to describe the hopscotch board.

You need chalk, pebbles, a driveway, and one kid or more for hopscotch. First, you draw a board with chalk on the driveway. It has ten boxes. The first box is a square by itself. It has the number 1 in the box. Next, the 2 and the 3 squares are right beside each other like partners. You keep repeating the boxes but the numbers go from 1 to 10. One kid goes first and throws the pebble anywhere on the hopscotch board. Then, the first player hops on one foot on the 1. And then the player hops on the 2 and the 3 at the same time. Then the player keeps going. But do not forget to pick up the pebble. When the player reaches 10 the player gets off the 10 and goes to the back of the line. Nobody wins but everybody has fun.

And lastly, here is the introduction to an essay in which a fifth grader describes himself. His bravura writing style attracts the reader, but notice how he uses numbers to enhance that style.

In 34 more days, I, Robert Sir Awesome the Third, am going to turn eleven. Bha ha ha! I will tell you about the life of a boy in the twenty-first century, or shall I say, about my life, including my sister, being the oldest child and school.

Don’t you agree that numbers increase reader interest in these student writings?

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Posted in Including details in writing

Writing topics for bored students

Posted on September 13, 2015 | Leave a comment

Do you have students who read over a list of writing topics and then set it down, bored? I have found topics that are sure to interest them.

high heel shoes made of wireOne group of topics concerns weird, unusual or unbelievable images.  If you use any of these topic suggestions, make sure you share the images from the internet with the student. It’s the images which will bring a smile and a flicker of interest. Then together you can come up with ways to work one or more images into writing.  If access to the internet is not available, then make a photocopy of some of the images for the student to look at.

These topics work well in the fall as Halloween approaches.

  • Search “ugly haircuts pictures” or “ugly haircuts images.”
  • Search “ugly dog pictures” or “ugly dog photos.”
  • Search “weird faces pictures” or “weird faces photos.”
  • Search “unusual jack o lanterns.”
  • Search “unusual shoes.”
  • Search “scary photos of people.”
  • Search “longest fingernails photos.”
  • Search “smiling horse pictures.”
  • Search “expensive car images.”
  • Search “twins images.”

shoes with ladder heelsAnother group of writing topics of interest to kids is the games that they play.  I allow students to add hand drawn diagrams to their writing to encourage them to use these topics, but I make sure they explain everything in words too.  Some ideas you might try are

  • How to solve a Rubics cube.
  • How to checkmate a king in four steps.
  • How to get down to one marble in a solitaire game.
  • What properties to buy in “Monopoly” in order to win.
  • How to win at “Clue.”

What about video games?  I find they don’t work.  When I let kids write about them in the past, the essays would go on for eight or ten pages with no end in sight.  I wound up writing “to be continued” at the end of a page so the student could move on to revising and editing.  Also, the writing is tough to understand even if it is done well because of the strange way vocabulary is used in the games.  Beware.

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Posted in expository essay, reluctant writers

Strategies for highlighting a text when summarizing

Posted on September 6, 2015 | Leave a comment

Highlighting a reading selection can be helpful for a student learning to summarize. But many students are not taught what to highlight. May I suggest an approach?

  • First, make a photocopy of the selection so that the student can highlight freely. Even if a student owns a text, making a photocopy of a reading selection when the student is learning how to highlight allows the student to make mistakes without damaging the text.
example of a text to be summarized plus a summary of it

Click on the information above about Ancient Greece to enlarge it.

  • Next, have the student read the selection without marking it in any way. If you suspect he might not understand the selection, question him about it until you are sure he understands it.
  • Third, ask him to find the topic. The topic is a word or a phrase identifying what the reading selection is about. Many times the topic is the title or headline, or it can be found in the first paragraph of a nonfiction reading selection. For a fiction selection, the student might need to infer from the details what the topic is, but usually it is stated. The student should underline or highlight the topic and write the word topic near that word or phrase. Identifying the topic reminds the student what the reading selection is about.
  • Now the student should identify the main idea. The main idea is not the same as the topic. A topic is a word or phrase; a main idea is a statement. From Charlotte’s Web, an early chapter’s main idea might be “Wilbur is lonely so he searches for a friend.” Or from an article about insects, a main idea might be, “An insect’s body has three parts.” The main idea might be found in the introduction of a nonfiction reading selection. Or the student might need to infer the main idea from the facts given. The student should highlight it and mark “main idea” next to it. Identifying the main idea often offers the student a sentence to write to begin the summary.
  • Next, the student should divide the reading selection into sections. This is not the same thing as dividing a selection into paragraphs, but it might turn out that each section is an individual paragraph. However, some sections, or subtopics, extend over more than one paragraph. The paragraphs of Wilbur asking the rat to play would be one section and the paragraphs of Wilbur asking the goose to play would be another section. The student could bracket a section in the margins or encircle all the paragraphs of one section with a single circle. In the margin of each section the student should name it with a word or phrase, such as “rat” and “goose.”
  • If there are important details, they should be highlighted or underlined. For example, if the reading selection’s topic is “Ancient Greece,” and it’s main idea is “Greece gave many contributions to world culture,” then the student should highlight categories of contributions such as poetry, statues, buildings, amphitheaters, democracy, trade routes, wine and plays. If a particular example is outstanding, such as the Parthenon or The Iliad and The Odyssey, they should be highlighted also.
  • Whole sentences should not be highlighted, just important categories or details. Depending on how long the summary should be, most details can be skipped.
  • Sometimes it helps to use arrows from the main idea to the supporting information that will be in the summary. Have the student draw arrows on the photocopy, including the points that should be in the summary.
  • Now the student is ready to write the summary. Start with the main idea, paraphrasing the original if possible. Have the student write it on his paper. Next, add one or more sentences fleshing out this main idea, using the highlighted categories and important details. If the student has done the preparation work, the summary writing should take just a few minutes.

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Posted in summarizing