Yearly Archives: 2016

When a student writes one or more paragraphs which don’t belong and need to be cut, what is the best approach?

Posted on September 13, 2016 | Leave a comment

The student has put time and effort into his writing, but part of that writing doesn’t work.

Child writing

  • Maybe it’s irrelevant information. The child has lost his focus and is heading down an interesting but off-topic route.  You can see this, but he can’t.
  • Maybe the words repeat. The child says the same idea he already said  and the repetition is not needed.
  • Maybe the sentences are something the student needs to write to get going. (I woke up in the morning and then I went to the bathroom and then I got dressed and ate breakfast, and we got on the plane and we flew to Las Vegas.  Ah Las Vegas!)  Everything that happens getting to Las Vegas has to be written by the student in order to start her writing, but it’s not what the essay is about and needs to be cut.

 

How does a teacher or parent show that words need to be cut without breaking the child’s heart?  Here’s my approach.

  • First I ask the student to read his writing aloud. I might ask him to show me where the “off topic” section is on his prewriting organizer.  He might notice it’s not there.  I say that I think the reason it’s not there is because it’s not  what he planned to focus on.  My goal here is to get the student to agree with my analysis.
  • I suggest that certain sentences probably should be saved for another essay. By saying they should be saved, I am allowing the student to save face as well as to think that all his work has not been in vain.  Usually the student says nothing.  Then I lightly, with a regular pencil, draw a big box around the words which I think should be removed, explaining what I am doing.  I do not cross out the words.  I don’t draw the box in ink or even in dark pencil.  I make it all seem tentative at first and able to be erased if the student disagrees.  My goal is to gain the student’s trust but not to force him to delete.
  • Next I ask the student to read the parts not boxed and see if they work without the boxed parts. Usually they do, but sometimes transitions might be needed.  If the box is the beginning of the essay, sometimes a new introduction needs to be written.  I ask the student to verbally say how the remaining parts can be connected if we leave out the boxed parts.  Usually the student has good ideas.  Usually he writes the new parts or the transitions between the lines or in the margins.
  • It’s important to evaluate the student’s body language through this process.  If he becomes a stone, or if he is barely able to talk, don’t press him.  Sometimes I say, let’s think about this until next lesson, okay?  And then I move the paper away and go to a different part of the lesson–a BINGO vocabulary review, for example.  My goal here is to maintain the student’s trust and to give him time to adjust his thinking.
  •  At the end of the lesson the box is still there, untouched.  The boxed writing is the student’s writing and he or she must decide whether it  stays or goes.

Did you ever see the film, All the President’s Men?  One reporter grabs the copy of another reporter and revises it without permission.  The original writer of the copy goes ballistic.  It’s the same thing when a teacher or parent changes a child’s copy without the child’s permission.  We need to respect the child and give him or her time to come around to our way of thinking.  And sometimes the child doesn’t.  That’s okay too.

 

Leave a comment

Posted in clarity, cutting out words or paragraphs, practice writing skills, revising first drafts

Is it okay to break the rules?

Posted on September 6, 2016 | Leave a comment

Children ask me this all the time.

  • They read a story in which the writer starts a sentence with “because,” something they have been forbidden to do. “So why can’t I start a sentence that way?”

EPSON MFP image

  • They read a conversation in which someone uses the word “gonna.” “So why can’t I do that?”
  • Their teachers tell them every paragraph needs five sentences and every essay needs five paragraphs. But I show them editorials or columns from newspapers which don’t follow these rules.  “So why can’t I do thatt?”
  • They (used to) learn cursive, but they’d see an adult’s signature composed of part cursive, part printing, and part illegible writing. “So why can’t I do that?”

We adults break the rules of writing all the time.  Using bullets, as I did above, is technically breaking the rules of paragraphing, yet bullets add white space and show a pattern of thought.  Bulleted items are usually short and easy to read.  They invite reading the way denser paragraphs do not.  Why not break the paragraphing rules if more people will read what we write and the writing is clear?

With children I suggest the following line of thinking about “rules” of writing.

  • Will I get in trouble if I break the rule? Usually, this means, Will my teacher lower my grade if I break the rule?  If the answer is yes, then follow the rule unless you have a mighty good reason not to and are willing to accept a lower grade.
  • Is your writing easier to understand if you break the rule? If the answer is yes, then break the rule.  Clarity outranks any stylistic tradition.  But usually rules were invented to add clarity.
  • Are you experimenting? If so, follow rules which make sense and ignore rules which inhibit your imagination.

Some of you might say that my “line of thinking” above is really a set of rules.  Yes, they offer guidance the way rules do.  But no, they are not hard and fast, and they allow the writer to choose his own rules as long as he can live with the consequences, the way adults do.

 

 

Leave a comment

Posted in clarity, cursive handwriting, grammar, writing rules, writing tips

Cursive makes a Southern comeback

Posted on August 31, 2016 | Leave a comment

As the 2016-17 opens, Alabama joins Florida and North Carolina in mandating by law that students learn cursive writing.Cursive alphabet

Alabama’s teachers must instruct third graders in cursive under a law that goes into effect this school year.  Although Alabama law previously required the teaching of cursive, the new law requires teachers to report students’ proficiency levels to the state at the end of third grade. Formerly, students needed to be proficient by the end of fifth grade.

Implemented in the 2012-13 school year, North Carolina has a law stating that “Public schools [shall] provide instruction in cursive writing, so students create readable documents through legible cursive handwriting by the end of fifth grade.”

Florida implemented its own standard, requiring cursive writing to be taught in third grade in public elementary school classes.

Which cursive will these students use?  Over the years, the type of cursive used by American students has become simplified and for some letters, similar to printing.  For example, the capital Q, which in old cursive looked like a loopy numeral 2, has been changed at the request of the US Postal Service.  The new Q looks more like a printed Q and less like the number 2.  The new capital K, P, R, and T look almost identical to the printed forms of those letters.

With fewer loops, the New American Cursive is quick to write, easier to read, and cleaner in look than the older versions of cursive.  An extreme slant of the letters has been replaced with a slight slant to the right, making the new cursive easier for left-handed students.

For more information on the new cursive, go to www.newamericancursive.com.

Leave a comment

Posted in cursive handwriting

How to encourage the addition of more details by students

Posted on August 24, 2016 | Leave a comment

Sometimes students balk at writing more details when they have finished their first drafts.  They think they have already included plenty of details when more details would enhance the writing.

To encourage the student to write more details, on a separate piece of paper I rewrite one of the student’s sentences needing more details and suggest we go back and forth–first me, then the student–adding details.  Here are some examples.

The student originally writes, “We walked back to the pool.”  I add, “In our flipflops and bathing suits,” to the beginning of that sentence.  “Well, of course we wore our bathing suits,” says my student, so he crosses out “and our bathing suits.”  But he adds, “In our flipflops we walked to the outside pool entrance.”

Another sentence the student originally writes is, “My cousin, Johnny, picked up a glass and cut his fingers.”  This time the student starts the additions by adding “soda” to “glass.”  I ask which fingers.  He crosses out “fingers” and adds “thumb and index finger.”  But then without my asking him to, he continues. “My cousin, Johnny, picked up a soda glass and cut his thumb and index fingers.  You could see the fat and blood.  My uncle drove him in a taxi to the hospital emergency room.  My uncle sent a picture to my aunt, showing Johnny doing a pose in his bandage.”  What a difference!

Another sentence my student writes is, “We walked to the gift shop.” Before I could add details, he added “to get rocky road ice cream because it was 100 degrees F.”

Why did this exercise work?  By pulling the sentences out of the student’s own work and isolating them, it was easy for the student to see the plainness of the sentences.  By my offering to write some of the additional phrases, the work seemed more like a game, and he was willing to play along.

Were we working on a computer, we could have swiped the new sentences and replaced the plainer ones, making the work even easier.

 

Leave a comment

Posted in composing text on computer, Including details in writing, practice writing skills, revising first drafts

“Then” is not a conjunction. And usually “then” is not needed.

Posted on August 16, 2016 | 2 comments

“Then” is an adverb and cannot be used as a conjunction, even though many of my students think it can.

Wrong:  I went swimming, then I took a shower.

Right:  I went swimming, and then I took a shower.

One way to show that “then” is not a conjunction is to move it around in the sentence.  “I went swimming, I took a shower then.”  “I went swimming, I then took a shower.”  You can see that these would-be compound sentences are actually run-ons even with the word “then” in the sentence.  They need a coordinating conjunction such as “and” or a subordinate conjunction such as “before.”

Many students use “then” as the first word of a sentence to show a time sequence or a transition from one idea to the next.  Students might need to do this as they write down events in chronological order.  But often they overuse the word “then,” with some students starting almost every sentence with that word.  An easy way to deal with this problem is to let the student write “then” all she wants in her first draft.  During revision, have her circle every “then” and cross out all but one. Let her choose which one stays.

Some grammar books indicate that “then” should be followed by a comma when it starts a sentence, or when it interrupts a thought.  A comma indicates a pause in thinking or in speaking, and since we Americans don’t usually pause after the word “then,” it is rarely necessary.

“Then” is one of many overused words by students, along with “so,” “just,” “like” and “and.”  Usually when students are made aware that they are overusing a word, they self-edit, but sometimes it takes several revisions to prove that they overuse certain words.

Also, “then” and “than” are not synonyms.  “Then,” like “when,” indicated time.  “Than” indicated comparisons.

 

2 Comments

Posted in adverbs, comma use, compound sentence, grammar, revising first drafts, revising parts of speech, Transitions