Category Archives: English Writing Instruction

Writing well takes study and practice.

How to help clueless children organize a fiction book review

Posted on February 1, 2015 | Leave a comment

Some children are truly clueless when it comes to writing and can benefit from step-by-step directions. If they use the same directions several times with different prompts, they begin to pick up patterns they can use in much of their writing. Here is how I approach a book review assignment for such children.

  • First, I hand out a blank prewriting organizer that I designed. (See below.) On it are important categories that should be mentioned in a book review.

prewriting organizer book review

  •  I ask the student to write down the name of the book. “Look at the cover,” I tell him, “and write it down exactly that way.” Then he writes down the author’s name. Sometimes I ask the student to go to the title page if the cover is confusing. There the information is clear.  If there is an illustrator, I have the student add the artist’s name.
  • Next, I ask where the book takes place. I probe until the student gives a detailed answer. He might start out saying something vague like “near a volcano,” but with help, he will say “in Pompeii, a city near a volcano called Mt. Vesuvius in Italy.” I ask him to write down the specific details on the prewriting organizer.
  • When did the story take place? The student might say something like “once upon a time.” We discuss if the events really happened or if they are make-believe. I probe, trying to get the student to supply a date, or a time period, or a certain number of years ago. If necessary, we page through the book together to find the information, and he might write “about 2,000 years ago.”
  • Who are the important characters? This information is usually easy for the student to supply, but some students have trouble distinguishing between important characters and minor characters. We discuss those ideas if this is confusing for the student. He might write down “Annie and Jack.”
  • What problem do the characters face? Huh? The student might have no idea if he is not used to thinking about a book this way. I explain that in all fiction books the main character(s) needs to do something: find out where a missing cat is, discover that her new baby brother is not a monkey after all, or stay safe from the big, bad wolf. Together we talk about what the problem in the book is, and the student writes it down.
  • How do the characters solve the problem? Again, the student might not be aware that at the end of most novels, the character solves the problem he or she faced throughout the novel. How does Cinderella meet the prince again and marry him? How does Sylvester return home to his family? How does Junie B. get home without taking the school bus? The student writes down the solution on the prewriting organizer.
  • Last, we talk about what the student liked or didn’t like about the book. If he just shrugs, I go back to the ideas we have already discussed—the setting, the characters, the problem and the solution. Did you care about any of them? Usually he cares about something, and we write that down. If there are illustrations, we talk about those. We talk about the vocabulary—too easy, too hard, or just right? Was the book funny? Eventually we come up with three or four ideas about why he liked or didn’t like the book.

This prewriting organizer worksheet and my help force students to think about the setting, characters, problem, outcome and likes/dislikes before they write the first sentence of their book reviews (which is, of course, what good writers do).

However, even with this preparation, some students still struggle with how to write that first sentence and how to sequence the rest of the information. We’ll talk about an even more specific strategy to get them started next time.

(The worksheet used here is my adaptation of one created 30 years ago by K. Wood. More about that can be found in Wood, K. D. (1984). Probable passages: A writing strategy. The Reading Teacher, 37(5), 496-499.)

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A revised first draft showing cross outs, arrows, circles and erasures means the student has truly improved the essay

Posted on January 25, 2015 | Leave a comment

Every professional writer knows that the real work of writing happens during revision. But this is an idea that students—and parents—need to learn. If a student says she has finished revising and her copy seems little altered, then she has probably not done a good job at revision.

On the other hand, if a student looks at her copy, noticing cross outs, arrows to side margins or to the back of the paper, words squeezed in, circles to identify verbs and first words of sentences and perhaps even sections cut apart and taped together in a different order, the student has truly revised.

Below is an example of the first page of a fourth grader’s messy but revised essay.

draft showing revisions 001

Revising is not editing. Revising means making substantial changes in the writing in order to improve it. Editing means looking for finer details such as correct spelling, apostrophes in the right spaces, and hyphens used appropriately. Unfortunately, in many school classrooms, students don’t learn to revise; they learn to edit.

Parents can be dismayed if they see the writing of my students while revising is in progress. Parents expect me to make the student edit too early on in the writing process. “Shouldn’t he change the spelling now?” a parent might ask, looking over his child’s shoulder.

When I work with children of parents like this, I show them examples of other students’ work, including the final draft. I let them see that the tiny errors will be corrected eventually. Usually this suffices until they see their own child’s finished work. Then they are sold on this writing process.

Perfectionist students might never reach the stage of good revising unless they learn to tolerate a degree of mess. I worked with one student who needed to start over so many times that she never completed a single essay. I have worked with other perfectionists who learned that the mess increases their chances of a higher grade, and so they set their sights on the perfect grade and begrudgingly accepted the interim mess.

Next we will talk about flow and how to make it happen.

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More about how to add details to improve writing

Posted on December 18, 2014 | Leave a comment

Let’s talk more about how students can add details.

Proper nouns are usually easy to add. If the student mentions his school, ask her to write the full name of the school. If the student mentions her home, ask her to mention the city and state. If the student mentions her teacher, ask her to name her teacher.

However, some students don’t want to reveal this information, especially if it will be published. (More on how to publish in a later blog.) When I tell them to make up the information, they think this is lying and are reluctant to do it, especially younger children. I explain that they are doing a writing exercise, and that renaming is perfectly ethical in a situation like ours. But expect resistance.

Numbers can be easy to add. How many friends threw snowballs? How many snowballs did you throw? How many minutes did you throw snowballs? Children tend to write “a few” or “lots” expecting the reader to know what they mean. They assume the information inside their own heads is available to the reader.

Dates, time of day, seasons—these are usually easy to add, but someone has to remind the student to add them.

Sensory feelings, smells, sounds, and tastes–Students describe what they see but often forget to describe reactions by their other senses—how cold the snow feels, how fragrant the hot chocolate smells, or how coming in from a cold day fogs their glasses.

Size and color are usually given by the student, but in a bland way. “Blue” can mean many shades of color. I help the student by looking up synonyms in a thesaurus or by writing a simile—blue as the ocean on a cloudless day.

Getting inside someone’s head helps the reader understand motivation, but students seldom explain, assuming everyone understands. “My brother hit me with a snowball. So I threw one back at him.” Why did you throw it back? What part of his body were you trying to hit? Were you mad at him or were both of you having fun? Ask the student to let the reader hear what she is thinking.

Adding dialog is like adding great action verbs. It brings writing alive. Dialog is not hard to add if the student thinks about it. Instead of “My brother and I decided to have a snowball fight,” how about this: “Hey, let’s see who can hit that tree the most,” my brother said. I said “Sure,” and began packing snowballs. The information is the same, but with dialog, the reader is better informed and more emotionally connected to the writing.

Feelings are important to add if there are characters. Even though a character might be flying a space ship over Mars, the reader can identify with the character when his fear or exhilaration are explained.

Adding examples can quickly make the reader understand a difficult concept. “The heavy rain soaked the ground. For example, the iris roots were covered with an inch of water where the roof drained near them.” Or “My little cousin says words funny. For example, she says “dog-EEE” when she sees a dog” and “No, no yuck” when she sees the dog’s dish of food.”

We’ll talk about more about adding figurative language in the next blog. It is another way to add detail to writing and to improve the style of writing..

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Add details to improve the number of words per sentence and to improve sentence structure.

Posted on December 11, 2014 | Leave a comment

Adding more details has the effect of adding more words to an essay. More importantly, it changes a general, humdrum essay into a specific, interesting essay. If the number of sentences stays the same, then the number of words per sentence increases, usually a good outcome for children who tend to write tiny sentences.Add Details graphicUntil they work with me, many students think that adding more details means adding more adjectives. Not so. When I say details, here is what I mean:

  • Proper nouns—Give names to common nouns already in the essay, or add names.
  • Numbers—Use specific amounts of items, not “some” or “a lot.”
  • Dates, time of day, time of year, year, season
  • Sensory details—Identify and describe smells, sounds, tastes, textures, and sights.
  • Sizes, shapes, colors, amounts.
  • Thoughts and opinions of the characters or the writer, if appropriate
  • Dialog—Let the reader hear characters talking instead of using indirect quotes.
  • Feelings of a character, including the narrator. These are often overlooked, yet it is through feelings that readers connect with characters.
  • Similes, metaphors, hyperbole and other figures of speech.
  • Examples—probably the most important kind of details.

One way to shake up an older student’s writing is to ask him to add each of these kinds of details (if appropriate) to a single essay. Or pick a number—five, for example—and let the student choose which kind of details to use. Some details are easier for the student to add by herself; others will take teacher modeling.
More on each of these kinds of details in the next blog.

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How to replace is, are, am, was, were, be, been and to be.

Posted on September 22, 2014 | 2 comments

The hardest skill students learn is how to replace the verb “to be.”  Yet is it the single most important skill for improving the verbs in their writing.

The problem is that the verb “to be” rarely has strong synonyms.
As a linking verb it can sometimes be replaced with another linking verb.  “He is sick” can become “He looks sick” or “He feels sick” or “He seems sick.”  But none of those replacements is much stronger than the original verb, “is.”

Change common verbs to more expressive verbs.

An excerpt of a third grader’s revised essay.

Even harder is when the verb identifies something that exists.  How do you restate, “That dog is mine.”  “That dog was mine,” changes just the verb tense; it is the same verb.  “That dog becomes mine,” changes the meaning.

What I tell my students is that usually they will need to replace not just the verb, but the whole sentence.  I ask them to tell me what the sentence means, using other words.  For the sentence, “He is sick,” I ask how they know he is sick.  What does he look like that would let me know he is sick?  They might say, “His face is red and he has a fever.”  I might say, “That’s good, but you are still using the word is.  How can you tell me that his face is red and that he has a fever without using the word ‘is’”?  Usually they are stumped, so I offer suggestions.  “His mother placed an ice bag on his flushed forehead.”  Or, “’Wow!  101 degrees,’ said his mother shaking the thermometer.”   Or, “The feverish boy lay down on the cold tile floor, moving every few seconds to chill his hot body.”

The trick is to let the reader see, hear, touch, smell or taste (usually see) what the writer saw in his mind before he wrote, “He is sick.”  “He is sick” is a conclusion based on certain facts.  What are the facts that led the writer to conclude that “He is sick”? Those facts are what the reader needs to know so that the reader can come to his own conclusion that “He is sick.”

We’ll have more blogs on changing the verb “to be” in the future because it is such a vital part of improving writing, yet such a difficult skill to master.  For now, we’ll move on to the next blog about sentence beginnings.

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