This post was written by Debbie Burks, an Indiana “graduated” homeschool mom. She shared it with me, and I thought it was helpful, that I wanted to share it with all of you! Graduated homeschool moms know the importance of writing. Debbie has helpful ideas for developing your child’s writing skills. Composition is time consuming, but it is SO important for life. Enjoy!
When I taught my children to write years ago in our homeschool, I thought about how my favorite writing teacher, Mr. Long, taught our reading/writing “advanced” class. We read a lot. Then we wrote from our own ideas, not prompts. We sometimes were able to choose our genre, but most of the time we were writing in a genre about which we were learning. He taught us for a short time in the beginning, and then gave us time to write. He met with each of us individually to discuss our writing. We shared at the end. This format encouraged my writing greatly; I grew as a writer that school year. I wanted the same for my own children.
So, I did the same with them. I taught short lessons. Each of them wrote from their own ideas, not mine, nor a prompt. They were all at different grades and ages, so their writing varied greatly in quality and quantity. I met with them individually to encourage and to teach them from their own writing. We shared our writing with one another….and with dad sometimes. They grew as writers.
When I started college after teaching my own kids, I wondered how to do this with students that I would be teaching. I had complete freedom in my homeschool to teach how I wanted to teach, however I could meet the needs of my children best. How could I meet the needs of 20-45 students (yes, one of my student teaching classes was extremely large: 38-44 children during that semester) while still giving them freedom to write from their own lives?
The answer came from an honors project as part of one of my teaching classes. One of my professors suggested it, as an extension of the class on teaching language arts. I attended a 3-day workshop with Isoke Nia (at that time she was working with Teacher’s College at Columbia University) sponsored by The Indiana Partnership for Young Writers. This workshop was an in-service experience for teachers at a Montessori public school in Indianapolis. I was amazed to be included as a student; I was so excited to be included in this experience. After three days of learning and working with the children in different classrooms, I was hooked on teaching writing by the workshop method.
I realized that my 6th grade teacher had taught us in this way, but he simply said it was how he had been taught to write in college. I taught my children that way. Now I teach other children through the workshop method.
The key to teaching in a writing workshop is individuality. As the teacher, you start with the child, not with a “lesson”. In the same classroom or family you might have a child who cannot write a complete sentence along with children who could write a short story in an hour. This was my experience in student teaching and in the classroom later. That will be the case in a multi-age homeschool classroom. When you talk with (or “confer,” as it’s often called) each individual student, you encourage them in their own writing. You won’t talk to a child that cannot make a complete sentence about making varied sentences. You start where they are. They just need to write in legible, understandable sentences. They need to write a lot. They need to read a lot. You may have to have them copy sentences that they think are interesting. Then they can create their own sentences from that sentence’s format. Give that child what he or she needs. That’s the secret to the success of writing workshops. Each child gets better; the whole class/family writes better.
In a homeschool classroom, the teacher has laundry to do as well as writing, and she wants to check off her list of things to do in a timely matter to get to the laundry, piano lessons, ball practice….whatever it is your family has to do the rest of the day. But learning to write well takes time. It’s hard work. You need about an hour a day. Yes, an hour a day.
Some of my friends filled out their workbook pages and completed their lessons in 2-3 hours. My family couldn’t get that done, because we spent a lot of time writing. I heard somewhere that writing is thinking on paper. It’s hard work. It takes time. Kids need TIME to get good at it. Thinking is hard work; writing it down takes time. It’s much more than filling in blanks in a workbook. More real learning takes place–a lot more!
How will you fill that hour? The first 5-15 minutes will be spent in a short lesson. I’ve often heard this called a “mini-lesson.” Mini means really small, so Mom isn’t going to talk a lot. She is going to use a book someone else wrote to teach something: punctuation, how the author used white space to lead the reader through the book, how the author used action verbs to make the story exciting and real, etc. Read the book aloud. I usually use one book for two weeks to a month: Harold and the Purple Crayon, the Little House books, Cynthia Rylant books, etc. Choose a good quality children’s book. Yes, even with high school students when you first begin. Have your high school students mastered writing children’s books? Are they published authors? Probably not.
After reading the book aloud (and please, make it interesting), ask the students what they notice. One might notice something about illustrations. That’s fine. Many books have illustrations. Point out how the words and the illustrations work together to tell the story. Get them to try that in their writing. Or if they notice that the author used action words (verbs) to make the story exciting, make a list of exciting action verbs together. The students can use the list if they want to make their writing more exciting. They can try whatever you discussed; usually I require it. If they are already working on something else, I might not. It’s up to you.
The next 30-40 minutes will be spent with your children writing. You, as teacher, will write as well. I have found that my students, whether in a classroom at home or in a school or in another venue, do better if I write as well. We’re in this together! Have you heard the admonition that you must be a reader if you want your child to be a reader? Well, if you want your students to be writers, then you must be a writer as well.
You will often have to demonstrate what you mean to “try out the idea”. The author used lots of action verbs? Then write something (short) using uninteresting verbs, and then change it up using more exciting, exacting verbs. That’s just an example of something to do in one of those short lessons at the beginning.
The last part of the hour should be used as sharing time. A few or all of your children (if in a homeschool) should share in that time. I also share, but I never share first. I’ve been writing a lot of years, and I don’t want the children to think that their writing should compare to mine.
Sometimes their writing is better.
That’s a writing workshop in a nutshell. There is a lot more to it, but that is the basic layout of a writing lesson.
Now, get started. Write.
Debbie Ralph Burks is the wife of a godly, sweet husband of 38 years, the mother of three amazing adults, and grandmother of five (who are homeschooled.) She started teaching when she was five: she taught herself to read, and then her three year old sister. She homeschooled her children, and then earned a degree in elementary education, and 1st-9th grade science. Her honors coursework was mostly done in collaboration with Indiana Partnership for Young Writers. She taught science in the middle school and elementary school at Hasten Hebrew Academy. Her allergies are so severe that she no longer teaches in the classroom. She has continued teaching in her church, and teaching writing to small groups of homeschoolers, where she can better control her teaching environment so that she will not have severe allergic reactions.