How Do You Teach Writing?

劉淑楨博士 應用英語學系 ( 所 ) 主任 立德大學

What are the problems with writing teaching?

Writing Anxiety

It can make writing a difficult and miserable activity. Every writer has had the experience of avoiding the blank page. Every writer knows the frustration of sitting down with a tablet of paper and pen, or at the computer, and feeling incapable of producing any words at all.A degree of procrastination and writer's block are a common part of writing.

Many of students become anxious or blocked because of negative or difficult experiences with writing.

Because we place unmanageable expectations on students.

Suggestions

Write something.Talk about student’s paper.Break it down.Picture a sympathetic audience.Identify student’s strengths.Think of student as an apprentice.Remember that writing is a process.Get support.

Write something

• Student get started early and write regularly (every day), the habit of writing may itself help student work through anxious moments.

Talk about student’s paper.• Brainstorm with teachers, a friend, and write

things down the way that you speak them. • When student is trying to get words on the

page, it’s important not to worry about correct usage or about sounding smart.

• Be sure that talking about student’s paper is accompanied by writing (even just note-taking, or lists, maps, outlines, pictures…); talking shouldn’t serve as a substitute for writing.

Break it down• When a writing seems daunting, separate the

larger project into parts and create manageable tasks for each part.

• Set small goals with specific deadlines, and focus student’s energy by reviewing each task in student’s head.

Picture a sympathetic audience

• Imagine an interested teacher, someone who is looking for the best in your students’ work rather than looking to find fault with it.

Identify your student’s strengths• Often, teachers are harsher critics of students’

writing than anyone else might be. • To quiet your inner critic, make a list of the things

students do well. Do your students explain things well? Do your students notice interesting things about

the texts that you read? Do your students often see connections between

texts ? • List your students’ strengths. and then use them to

counteract the efforts of your inner critic.

Think of student as an apprentice.

• Sometimes students experience anxiety because the situations in which students are writing have changed. Maybe they are writing in a novel format, or for a different audience, or about subject matter that is new to them.

• Try to learn as much, and gain as many skills in that area, as them can without expecting themselves to have mastered everything in a short while.

Remember that writing is a process

• There is always more to be said on a topic, and a writer will always be able to imagine new and more interesting ways of saying it.

• At any point in time, a writer offers readers her or his current insight into a topic.

Get support.

• Choose a writing partner, someone you trust to help and encourage your students.

• Share pieces of your students’ writing for feedback, and talk to writing partner about their ideas, their writing process, their worries, and the like. Ask their writing partner and other classmates about what they do when they get stuck.

• Form or join a writing group to help keep deadlines and to get constructive and supportive criticism.

How do we make a homeschool writing curriculum?

What should we teach and when ?

Writing Teaching Skills

Keep Your Goals in Mind

Remember the Big Picture

Set Your Own Scope and Sequence

Keep Your Goals in Mind

• It is the education of your students. This means you set the goals, the direction of what you consider important in the homeschool writing curriculum and necessary to reach your writing curriculum goal.

Write across the curriculum

• Another important thing to remember is to include writing across the curriculum. Writing does not need to be bound to your "Writing Curriculum Lessons." Instead, try to think of ways to combine a writing form with whatever they are learning.

• Develop your homeschool writing curriculum by including forms of writing across different homeschooling subjects: Historical topics provide the content - and you need to be creative to suggest a response to their reading in different forms.

Remember the Big Picture• Remember the big picture of 12 years.

Let's just assume that most of your student’s education will happen within these years. This gives you the big picture. When they are starting Year 1 -they don't need to know how to write persuasive essays.

• Your homeschool Writing Curriculum is spread out over this time. You can teach writing in its forms over a number of years. Some forms of writing you may decide not to teach at all. Will it ruin your students if they have never written poetry, a riddle or an interview? You decide!

Set your own Scope and Sequence

• In your writing curriculum, you can set your own scope and sequence.

• Scope and sequence is the order in which the writing skills can be developed, and it is not that difficult.

What Is Writing Process?

Writing ProcessTracing letters and teaching the correct letter formations.Coping words.Coping from Dictation.Writing larger selections.Writing from Dictation of large selectionsCoping narrations.Writing narrations.Teaching with style.Teaching writing forms.

1.Tracing letters and Teaching the correct letter formations.

Three P's of Writing Preparation:

• Posture,

• Pencil Grip

• Paper Position

Posture • Sit with buttocks pushed to the back of chair. • Have feet flat on floor. • Head should be held up, not drooping forward.

A drooped head strains neck and back muscles. • Back should be straight, with the trunk leaning

forward from the hip joint for a comfortable writing position.

•

Pencil Grip

• Use a six-sided (hexagonal) pencil or pen. Hold it between thumb and middle finger. The pencil should be held lightly enough so that it can be pulled out of the hand easily, but firmly enough to maintain good control. Hand and finger muscles should not be tightly tensed.

• Write with the point of the pencil and hold it just above the shaven area.

Paper position

• The side edge of the paper should be parallel to the arm holding the pencil. The other hand should rest above the writing to steady and move the paper up and down as needed.

• The left-handed student will do the same, but the paper will be at the opposite angle. Be sure that the left-handed student rests his pencil hand below the baseline, not above the writing.

2.Copying words• Once your students have begun to form their letters, l

et them copy some easy words.- This can be done in a variety of ways- begin an alphabet book with cut out or drawn pictures of the letter, and the students can copy the appropriate word under the picture. Number books – copying the words and drawing the correct number. Colour books. Family books – writing the names of the members of the family under photos. Journals – a drawing of their experience with your writing, out of which they copy a few words.

• The ideas are endless.

3.Copying sentences – copying punctuation

• As your student becomes ready to copy more than just one word, they can copy sentences. From the beginning, a high standard must be set. The books they create must be treated as a very special keepsake, and so all their work, must be done in the best manner possible.

• Teacher would write some sentences on their page and they would copy the words exactly under what teacher has written. Now they need to understand that each word needs its own space. The beauty of copying is that you do not need anything apart from what teacher is already using.

• Copying is an extension of whatever the student is listening to. Copywork should come from the most excellent literature, and therefore, the story book is an excellent source. In this way you can focus on how to teach writing at the same time as learning story.

• Copybook is a very effortless way of teaching a number of things. It is an easy way to teach correct punctuation. The student needs to copy exactly what you have written and so they need to copy the capital letter and the fullstop. As the difficulty of the passage increases, there are other aspects of punctuation to be taught in the context of real writing- commas, quotation marks, semi-colons, colons and so on.

• Another benefit of simple copying is that students are seeing words written correctly, and are copying them in correct spelling. They may not be reading fluently, yet their eyes are constantly observing how letter patterns are formed, and also subconsciously realizing that there are no patterns of d followed by b, or t followed by f and so on.

4. Writing from Dictation

• Ideally, we copy a passage on Monday and write it from dictation on Tuesday. For some reason, this theory is very hard to put into practice.

• Dictation is simply the teacher saying the passage out loud and the student writing it.

• At first, you will need to re-inforce the punctuation of a sentence and this is part of the learning process. “Remember, when we begin a sentence we begin with a capital letter. The first word I want you to write is ‘The’. ‘The’ begins with a ‘t’, so make sure your first letter is a capital.” This procedure must also take place with the introduction of every new concept.

• As time goes on, the student will not need your prompting and you can introduce the dictation time by saying that this will be a test to see if they know how to begin and end a sentence.

5. Copying larger selections

• You can continue to teach writing by selecting larger and more difficult passages and including different forms of writing. (letters, essays, poems, argumentative essays, speeches ).

6. Writing from Dictation of large selections

• The selections of writing and the level of difficulty can increase as the students mature in their ability. It is very important that you train your students to listen very carefully to the passage being dictated and only repeat the line twice so that they must pay attention.

• You would also tape your dictation passages and given it to them to listen to and write. This also frees you up to attend to another student.

7. Copying own narrations

• Narration is the simple tool of asking your student to “narrate” or “Tell back” to you whatever he or she has read or listened to.

• Narration is so simple and so effective. You can and should begin to ask your student to narrate when they are very young and continue to do so.

• At a young age, you can ask them what the story was about and you would physically write their words on paper for them.

• They may illustrate the page. Alternatively, you may decide to type it for them.

• As their writing skills increase they can copy their own narration.

• I would suggest that this is initially done by writing their own words on a paper and leaving a line for them to copy the words directly underneath.

• When that skill is achieved, they may be able to copy their own narration from the board, or from a separate piece of paper.

• Narration is an excellent tool. It forces the student to organize their thoughts.

• They need to sequence ideas and construct sentences. They need to draw on their memory and learn to express their thoughts.

• They need to choose words carefully and a student who has listened intently will often repeat the colourful language he has just heard. This increases their own vocabulary.

• Not every narration needs to be written down. It is firstly an oral skill, an extremely important oral skill which is needed as a precursor for writing.

8. Writing own narrations• Narration can be done in many ways. It is a way to teach

writing across all subject areas. It is the most effectual tool to see what your student has learned after they have read (or listened to) an assigned passage from a Science book, Historical fiction novel, History Text, or Literature.

• However, it can be used wherever reading takes place. Your student may be reading about nouns in a grammar text. You may ask him to read the information and then tell you all the sorts of nouns there are (i.e. common, proper, abstract…) The narration can be as broad or as specific as you desire. You can ask about what happened (broad) or ask them to describe how 'Character A' felt after…..(specific).

• We usually begin by narrating their own Short Story Book. As we read the stories, they narrate what happened and I copy their words into their own book.

• I use A4 Visual Arts Diaries for most of their subject areas, and I write the narration and they illustrate it. The beauty of this is that they have their own Story book written by them and a lovely keepsake for themselves. This can also be done with Aesop’s fables – and made into a book.

• Most of the time a student can be prompted to narrate by just asking the student to tell what the passage was about.

• Sometimes, however, another prompt may be needed. There are many different creative writing prompts which can help your student to begin a narration.

9.How to Teach Writing with Style

• Style is all about learning how to write effectively and with clarity. A child who has been taught to narrate from early on, has already learned to sequence and construct sentences and thoughts. This is a fantastic advantage.

Thank You For Listening!