For young writers, create small lists of synonyms to replace overused words

Posted on November 8, 2015 | Leave a comment

When students are too young to use a thesaurus, they still should be encouraged to find synonyms for words they rely on all the time, such as “see,” “nice,” “thing,” “go” and “a lot.”

student thinking about what to writeOne way to do this is to collect synonyms for words children overuse, and make a booklet of them which children can refer to when they are writing. Such word lists are readily available on the internet. If you search for “words kids overuse in writing,” you’ll find many websites listing synonyms which you can download.

Recently I was working with a second grader whose first grade teacher had made an eight-page booklet of synonyms. My student was about to use “biggest” to describe an a pumpkin patch when I asked her to consider synonyms. She consulted her word bank and chose “massive” instead.

Unless words are used as parts of idioms, or are versions of the verb “to be,” they can usually be replaced with more specific words with little rewriting.

If you know students will be writing about an upcoming event, you can prepare a page of substitute words. For Halloween, the word “ghost” could be replaced with specter, spirit, demon, spook, phantom, shadow or apparition. At Thanksgiving, the word “turkey” could be replaced with poultry, fowl, rooster or bird. In the winter, “snow” could be replaced with flurries, blizzard, squall, crystals, flakes, powder and dust.

Replacing weak or overused vocabulary words with fresh, specific ones, especially verbs, is one of the best ways to improve writing.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Writing Instruction, vocabulary building

How long does it take to revise a first draft?

Posted on November 1, 2015 | Leave a comment

Revision time depends on many factors, including:

  • The length of the original piece of writing. The longer the first draft is, the more hours you should expect to spend revising.
  • boy on stool writingWhether you revise as you write or keep writing a draft until you reach the end and then revise. If you revise while you write, you might need less time later. But you may reach the end and decide big chunks of already revised material need to be tossed out, making early revisions a waste of time.
  • Whether you organize your work before you write your first sentence. In general, the more time you put into planning and detailing before you write, the less time you need to revise.
  • Your willingness to cut hundreds or thousands of words. Some writers can ruthlessly revise copy while others snip a little here and a little there, again and again. It’s painful to discard your writing, but the quicker you can throw out the bad or the not needed, the faster your revising is likely to go.
  • Your writing skill. The more skilled you are, the longer it might take you to revise since you know great writing is rewriting.
  • Your patience.
  • Your deadline. A deadline of tomorrow destroys distractions and helps you to focus.

Leave a comment

Posted in first drafts, revising first drafts

Try journal writing with your child to improve mechanics, grammar and vocabulary

Posted on October 25, 2015 | Leave a comment

Many teachers ask their students to write in journals daily for a few minutes. Often it is at the start of the writing lesson, while the teacher readies herself for the lesson.

But journal writing needn’t be restricted to the classroom. Journal writing during homework time can achieve many of the same results as writing during the school day.

  • boy writing on a window benchStudents can improve the mechanics of their writing. Capitalization, punctuation, use of apostrophes, use of quotation marks—all can improve through regular journal writing. When the child has completed her five or ten minutes of journal writing, the parent can remind the child to check if her sentences begin with capitals or if she has remembered to spell there/their/they’re correctly. This reminder can be given for a week, and then the next week the reminder can be about another aspect of writing which the child is learning.
  • By writing daily in a journal, the child can gain confidence using certain kinds of writing, such as dialog, extended sentences, or prepositional phrases. Before the child begins her journal writing homework, the parent could say that she wants the child to begin each sentence with a prepositional phrase or to include dialog in her writing. Later, the parent could ask the child to check that the end-of-sentence period is inside the quotation marks.
  • child writing in sleeping bagIf the child allows the parent to read the journal, the child could be encouraged to write a question mark or even a question to the parent asking about something she has tried to write. For example, the child might have tried to use a new vocabulary word, and might want to know if she used it correctly or spelled it correctly. The parent could write a note in the journal to let her know if she succeeded, establishing a dialog between a beginning writer and a more experienced writer.
  • In her journal, the child might relate a private thought which she might not have the confidence to say aloud. She might write about a bullying situation or a curse word used by a classmate. Journals can open discussions about sensitive issues.
  • Sometimes the parent might suggest an open-ended sentence to write about. “If I saw my brother doing something unsafe, like ________, I would. . .” or “The reason I don’t like ________  is because . . .”

To encourage a child to write in a journal, the parent might say that she is going to write in a journal at the same time. The parent might read aloud her journal entry or might say, “Not tonight,” providing the child with permission not to share her writing. Or the parent might give the child her journal entry to read aloud or privately.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Writing Instruction

Students should use more proper nouns to add details

Posted on October 18, 2015 | Leave a comment

One easy way to add details to writing is to add proper nouns.   Yet children don’t recognize the advantage.

When children write, details such as names are clear in their minds. If they know that “we” stands for Mom, Dad and Louisa, they think the reader will too. Children are so self-centered that they forget to put themselves in the shoes of readers. They need to be reminded that readers don’t know all that the writer knows, so the writer needs to be more specific.

Here is an example of part of a fourth grader’s essay. The part in black is the essay as the student wrote it (with names changed). The part in blue is the same information with proper nouns and more details added by me.

Three months ago I finished fourth grade which I liked because of my teachers and my classes.

In May I finished fourth grade at School 18. I liked fourth grade because of my teachers, Ms. Perkins and Mr. Howard.

We had two teachers, Ms. Perkins, my math, science, and social studies teacher, and Mr. Howard, my reading and language arts teacher. Ms. Perkins didn’t give much homework, but she gave us a project for social studies. Out of all subjects, she taught me math the most. Mr. Howard, a really good teacher, used to play ball with us at recess.

Ms. Perkins taught Room 104 math, science, and social studies, and Mr. Howard taught us reading and language arts. Ms. Perkins didn’t give homework on Thursdays and Fridays, but she gave us a project about a person from the Revolutionary War. I researched Paul Revere and his ride to Lexington. Out of all subjects, she taught me math the most, including division, long division, decimals, area and perimeter. Mr. Howard, a really good teacher, used to play basketball with us at recess. He’s as good as Lebron James!

Which held your interest more?

Adding proper nouns isn’t hard.  Here are some ways.

  • Replace pronouns with names of particular people and places.  After you replace the name with a pronoun, reuse the name especially in a new paragraph.
  • Make up names if you are not sure or if the name doesn’t matter.  If you can’t remember the restaurant’s name, make one up.  If you can’t remember the tour director’s name, make one up.  If you can’t remember the name of the college your sister attends, make one up.  For most writing by children, absolute honesty is not important.  Writing well is.
  • Compare a particular person, for example, a little brother, to a famous person, for example, Dennis the Menace.
  • Use the names of books, movies, video games and board games instead of common nouns.
  • Add days of the week, months and holiday names.

Leave a comment

Posted in proper nouns

Write to learn

Posted on October 11, 2015 | Leave a comment

Why do we write?  We express ourselves, we show what we know, we communicate with others, we have fun–the reasons vary.  But one of the most important, though often overlooked reasons, is that we write to learn.girl with pony tail on floor writing

Recently I worked with a high school student who was required to read Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt, a memoir about the author’s miserable childhood.

However, my student not only needed to read the text but she needed to write about it using this approach:

  • On her computer (she could have used notebook paper), she created two columns. The first was labeled “Direct quote and page number” and the second was labeled “My response.”
  • For each chapter in the book, she was required to find one quote that identified the main point of that chapter. In the left column, she rewrote that quote  and its page number. In the right column she wrote a personal response to that quote. She did the same for all the chapters of the book.

“This assignment is probably to prove to the teacher that I read it,” she said to me. True, but this combination of reading and writing also helped her learn.

  • The student needed to analyze each chapter for its main idea or theme. She had to compress all those words of text and evaluate which idea seemed to dominate.
  • The student needed to find a quote that exemplifies the theme of each chapter. This called for understanding the text and evaluating one quote’s worthiness compared to another quote’s worthiness.
  • The student needed to use her emotional intelligence to offer a personal response. She knew that other students might choose the same quote. She needed to offer an insight that was uniquely hers.
  • And later, during a verbal discussion of the text or a written test, this writing assignment would probably make the student more confident. She had thought through the main ideas and was able to put forward an educated understanding.

Many research studies show a positive  correlation between writing about a text and understanding it. Writing is not the only way to improve reading comprehension, but it is a proven good way.

For more information about this learning strategy, see The Read, Respond, Revisit, Discus Strategy (Hurst, Fisk, & Wilson, 2006)

Leave a comment

Posted in write to read better