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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Posted in English Writing Instruction, revising first drafts

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Identify the range of the sentence lengths to increase the variety of sentence lengths and reader interest

Posted on January 14, 2015 | Leave a comment

The range of sentences means the sentence with the largest number of words minus the sentence with the smallest number of words. That number is the range.

Knowing this number can be useful.

• If the range is in the single digits, that means most of the sentences in a piece of writing are about the same length. The reader will find the writing boring, though the reader might not know why.

• If the range is in the high teens or twenties, that means there are some longer sentences and some shorter sentences. This range shows the writer has used a variety of sentence lengths. The reader will find this kind of writing interesting, though again, the reader might not know why.

Most students need to increase the range of their writing. To do that, students need to be aware of sentence range and to force themselves to write sentences of varying lengths.

When elementary school-aged children write, most of their sentences are ten words or less unless they are writing a sentence that includes a series or they are compounding sentences. So the range for such children usually is a low number—maybe nine or less. Older students write longer sentences, but again, usually their range is a low number—maybe twelve. Experienced writers might have a range in the twenties. But in order to get such a high range, writers must have a sentence with 26, 27, or 28 words, and another sentence with just a handful of words.

Notice the following introduction to an essay written by a fifth grader:

Have you ever played Monopoly? If you have,
then you know all about it. If you have not,
then let me describe Monopoly to you.

The first sentence has 5 words, the second sentence has 9 words, and the third sentence has 11 words. 11 minus 5 gives a range of 6. If the rest of the sentences in this essay are about 5 to 10 words long, the range would be small and the essay would be stylistically unappealing.

Compare that to the beginning of a narrative written by a rising second grader:

Once when I woke up I found a baby unicorn in
my tiny bed. It looked as tall as me with a tail
and wings, a purple and pink horn, and a white
and yellow body. Right away I jumped on the
unicorn and flew to a castle that is made out of
glass. She said I owned the castle.

The first sentence has 14 words; the second has 22 words; the third has 18 words; and the fourth has 6 words. 22 minus 6 gives a range of 16, an excellent range for such a young writer. Notice also that all four sentences vary in length by 4 words or more. Analyzing only sentence lengths, the second selection is stylistically more interesting than the first.

By combining sentences or adding more detail, students usually bump up the number of words per sentence. For some students, increasing the number of words per sentence and eliminating all short sentences can become an obsession. This is a mistake. Including short sentences is essential to good writing.

Did you notice in the last paragraph that a nineteen-word sentence was followed by a four word sentence? Often, a really short sentence after a long sentence can add style to writing. Students need to see examples of this kind of writing to know that it is not only okay, but desirable. Below is an example of a 36-word sentence followed by a 9-word sentence (a range of 27) from Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo.

Me and Winn-Dixie got into a daily routine
where we would leave the trailer early in
the morning and get down to Gertrude’s
Pets in time to hear Otis play his guitar
music for the animals. Sometimes Sweetie
Pie snuck in for the concert, too.

When a student uses dialog, the number of words per sentence plummets since most characters, like most real people, speak in short sentences, phrases or single words. Dialog should sound natural. But students fixated on the number of words per sentence might want to eliminate dialog in order to maintain a high number of words per sentence. Again, this is a mistake. To counter this tendency, when I ask students to calculate the number of words per sentence, I allow them to eliminate any sentence with dialog in them. On the other hand, when students calculate the range, they should include short sentences with dialog.

In the next blog we will talk about the mess all this revising creates in a student’s draft.

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Add metaphors and allusion to add sensory details and style

Posted on January 11, 2015 | Leave a comment

We talked about how adding alliteration, simile and hyperbole can improve the number of details and style of writing. These three figures of speech are usually the easiest for children to fit into their writing, but with practice, other kinds, including metaphor and allusions, can become easy.

Metaphors are indirect comparisons. “Like” and “as” are not used, causing children to wonder how to incorporate metaphors into their writing. Start by using “is” and say something is something else, especially if the something else seems odd or far-fetched. For example, “My dog is my guardian angel.” Or, “My cat is a mouse exterminator.” Or, “My dog is my alarm clock.”

a mountain of books to read

A mountain of books to read.

Next, try leaving out “is.” “My guardian angel, Buster, smelled the fire before I did.” “On the farm, Angel transformed from a sweet, purring friend into a mouse-pouncing exterminator.” “Buster, my alarm clock, keeps me on time for the school bus.”

Metaphors usually require more practice than similes, but they are powerful sensory comparisons, capable of bringing more style than similes do to writing.

Allusions are references to commonly understood myths, stories, people or works of art. The Bible and Shakespeare’s writing are commonly used as allusions in the West. But there is no reason Harry Potter, Percy Jackson or Goldilocks can’t be used. For example, if a child is writing about an annoyed mother, who is telling her son to come out of his room, the mother could say, “You better come out or I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your door down.” Notice that in this example, the big, bad wolf from the Three Little Pigs is alluded to but not named. Or in describing a big sister, a young writer could say, “She has the looks of Sleeping Beauty and the brains of Hermione Granger.”

To make an allusion work, the writer must know his audience well enough to believe that his readers are familiar with the reference he is making; if not, the allusion is lost. Even if every reader isn’t in on the allusion, child writers should be encouraged to try them. J. K. Rowling used allusions when naming some of the characters in her books. For example, by naming Professor Snape with a name that sounds so much like snake, J. K. Rowling intends readers to think of bad, snake associations.

Most rubrics for student writing include figures of speech as desirable elements to improve the style of a student’s writing. But on their own, most students don’t think to include figures of speech in their writing. These elements must be practiced and pointed out to make the student comfortable with them.

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Add figurative language to not only increase sensory details but style.

Posted on December 30, 2014 | Leave a comment

Many students forget to use figurative language in their writing even though on most of the rubrics used to evaluate student writing, figurative language is included in the section marked “style.”

What kinds of figurative language are easy to insert?

Alliteration means the repetition of a particular consonant sound as in “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.” Students can be intimidated by alliteration because they think they need to use every word beginning with the same sound. Two words beginning with the same consonant sound is usually enough, and those words don’t need to be consecutive. For example,

My little brother, Fred, was nearly frozen with fear.

I dreamed about a dreary day in December.

My mother made mashed potatoes on Monday.

After a student has written a rough draft, and after he has examined his writing for clarity, verbs and sentence openings, I help him introduce alliteration. I find words beginning with consonants that might be easy to modify with an adjective or with a prepositional phrase. Together we think up adjectives that begin with the same letter as the noun, such as a large linden tree or a cherry-flavored chocolate bar. Or, if the writing is fiction, we might change names (John F. Kennedy School becomes John Jefferson School). Or we might add to a name to provide alliteration (Mary becomes Mary Margaret).

Similes are comparisons using like (my cat seems like a tiger) or as. . .as (my cat is as fierce as a tiger). Students come up with similes easily when they are reminded to do so, but many times the similes they choose have nothing to do with the ideas being expressed.

For example, a student might describe his sticky buns “as sticky as a stamp on an envelope.” True, both are sticky, but the buns are a delicious food and the stamp is a piece of paper. Instead, I ask the student to identify another delicious food that is sticky. “My sticky buns are as sticky as peanut butter on my teeth.” Or, “My sticky buns are as sticky as taffy on my braces.” These provide closer analogies and so they work better as similes.

Poor example:  He ate as fast as a rollercoaster.

Better example:  He ate as fast as a steam shovel.

Even better:  He ate as fast as an out-of-control fire.

You might think hyperbole would be easy for a student to use, but it is not. Hyperbole is the extreme exaggeration of an idea to the point of absurdity. “I ate three large pizzas last night” could be hyperbole if eating three large pizzas is clearly impossible for that child, but “I ate 23 large pizzas last night” is clearly hyperbole. “I had five hours of homework last night” might not be hyperbole, but “I have enough homework to last me until I am 70 years old” is clearly hyperbole.

Poor example:  My great-grandmother can remember the Great Depression.

Better example:  My great-grandmother voted for George Washington.

Usually students don’t exaggerate enough. They might write, “I ate a whole pizza last night,” or “I studied for four hours for that test.” Together we strategize about what is possible but unlikely (not hyperbole) and what is clearly impossible (hyperbole).

We also talk about the tone of the student’s writing. Hyperbole works well in humorous writing but it sometimes changes the mood of a more serious piece. If that is the case, I suggest the student use another form of figurative speech.

More on other figures of speech in the next blog.

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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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