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16. Encourage descriptive writing by focusing on the sounds of words.
Ray Skjelbred, middle school teacher at Marin Country Day School, wants his seventh grade students to listen to language. He wants to begin to train their ears by asking them to make lists of wonderful sounding words. "This is strictly a listening game," says Skjelbred. "They shouldn't write lunch just because they're hungry." When the collective list is assembled, Skjelbred asks students to make sentences from some of the words they've collected. They may use their own words, borrow from other contributors, add other words as necessary, and change word forms.
Among the words on one student's list: tumble, detergent, sift, bubble, syllable, creep, erupt, and volcano. The student writes:
· A man loads his laundry into the tumbling washer, the detergent sifting through the bubbling water.
· The syllables creep through her teeth.
· The fog erupts like a volcano in the dust.
"Unexpected words can go together, creating amazing images," says Skjelbred.
SKJELBRED, RAY. 1997. "Sound and Sense: Grammar, Poetry, and Creative Language." The Quarterly (19) 4.
17. Require written response to peers' writing.
Kathleen O'Shaughnessy, co-director of the National Writing Project of Acadiana (Louisiana), asks her middle school students to respond to each others' writing on Post-it Notes. Students attach their comments to a piece of writing under consideration.
"I've found that when I require a written response on a Post-it instead of merely allowing students to respond verbally, the responders take their duties more seriously and, with practice, the quality of their remarks improves."
One student wrote:
While I was reading your piece, I felt like I was riding a roller coaster. It started out kinda slow, but you could tell there was something exciting coming up. But then it moved real fast and stopped all of a sudden. I almost needed to read it again the way you ride a roller coaster over again because it goes too fast.
Says O'Shaughnessy, "This response is certainly more useful to the writer than the usual 'I think you could, like, add some more details, you know?' that I often overheard in response meetings."
O'SHAUGHNESSY, KATHLEEN. 2001. "Everything I Know About Teaching Language Arts, I Learned at the Office Supply Store." The Quarterly (23) 2.
18. Make writing reflection tangible.
Anna Collins Trest, director of the South Mississippi Writing Project, finds she can lead upper elementary school students to better understand the concept of "reflection" if she anchors the discussion in the concrete and helps students establish categories for their reflective responses.
She decided to use mirrors to teach the reflective process. Each student had one. As the students gazed at their own reflections, she asked this question: "What can you think about while looking in the mirror at your own reflection?" As they answered, she categorized each response:
I think I'm a queen - pretending/imagining
I look at my cavities - examining/observing
I think I'm having a bad hair day - forming opinions
What will I look like when I am old? - questioning
My hair is parted in the middle - describing
I'm thinking about when I broke my nose - remembering
I think I look better than my brother - comparing
Everything on my face looks sad today - expressing emotion.
Trest talked with students about the categories and invited them to give personal examples of each. Then she asked them to look in the mirrors again, reflect on their images, and write.
"Elementary students are literal in their thinking," Trest says, "but that doesn't mean they can't be creative."
TREST, ANNA COLLINS. 1999. "I was a Journal Topic Junkie." The Quarterly (21) 4.