Pondering Writing....Making it Fun

This has been an interesting year encouraging my kids to write. Their journeys, like everything else, have been very individual to them.

The kids have to do either their Jamestown reading book (which also involves writing) or else exercises from their Vocabulary for Achievement books (First Course, Pub: Great Source), and they also have Daily Grammar Exercises (Pub: Evan-Moor) which they do.

We started out the year with Aurora doing writeguide.com, an online instructor-student relationship, but the instructor would have her make one word change and resubmit it, so it took an entire semester to write one semi-polished research paper. We dropped that and Aurora focused on doing her Jamestown, middle level, which studies 5 different genre's. That has clicked with Aurora and she has produced some delightful writings. I don't give her huge amounts of feedback on what she writes, yet her writing continues to get better and better. She also started writing for fun in a notebook and I suggested she type it into the computer for her daily typing practice. She did so, and continued it as 'typing practice' each day and is now on page 27 of a single-spaced story. In many ways, schools restrict students simply because teachers cannot have 20 students going 20 different directions at 20 different speeds. Somehow I doubt Aurora would be diving into writing projects like this if she were in a regular school because the school mentality is "Do what you're told to do and no more," while our homeschool attitude is "You make this what you want. Follow your passions and interests."

Denver has been more challenging to guide in the writing process. Jamestown is a bit advanced for his interest level (though not reading level), so he found it hard to muster any enthusiasm for the writing activities. Working with a tutor for 10 weeks on it made it clear that he was understanding what he was reading and had some good thoughts about it, but didn't have much joy in it. Sometime during the fall I added an additional day of writing to Denver's schedule called Fun Write. He could write whatever he wanted. He loves writing short stories about space adventures, and his joy knew no bounds.

Then his idea list petered out and he was having a hard time getting started. Sitting around one day, I started stringing a story together about a sister who steals stuff out of her brother's room and then he discovers it is actually the cat that is doing it through special powers of making lego creations into working machines at night when the boy was asleep. Denver's imagination was caught and away he went. That was a turning point for Denver in writing. Before then he was always trying to follow rules and do things the 'right' way and make them realistic. It was like there was a mental box in his mind for how he 'should' write. When we talked about it and he removed that box he discovered a great joy in writing. The words flowed and he worked on one story for an hour every day for a week.

Denver has been begging for a blog of his own for months and I finally got around to getting one put together for him. That has added a new dimension of joy to writing for him, and he is 100% self-motivated when it comes to keeping up his blog. As he informed me this morning, he only counts blogging as a fun write when it is over 300 words. He set that standard, though we had casually talked about whether it should count or not.

Both my kids know how to put words together and have great imaginations. Their grammar could be better, but then, I teach college writing courses so my expectations are pretty high too. Denver detests revising and editing his stories, especially when I mark all of the errors. I think in the future I need to choose a couple areas to edit (say, just punctuation or correct use of quotes) so that it is not so overwhelming.

Mostly, though, I am so happy that the kids love to write! It is not something I have to impose on them; they have found the spot inside themselves that loves to put their words on paper in a delightful way. Once again, I say, "Mission accomplished!"

Squabbling!

Gee, of course I didn't plan on my kids squabbling now that we homeschool, but it does erupt at times. This morning was a good example. We got one desktop computer through Connections for the kids for homeschooling. It wasn't too much of a problem at the beginning of the school year because both the kids did much of their writing in notebooks. Recently, though, Denver started blogging and Aurora is writing a very long story (now at 25 pages single spaced!) on top of history research and typing and whatever else comes up. The kids' agreement is that whoever gets out to the cabin first and turns on the computer gets to use it first. This morning Denver fell back asleep after his alarm clock went off so Aurora made it out to the computer first. Denver flipped out because he is virtually always the first one out and he has his routine: he checks his email, updates his blog (http://seymours.wordpress.com/) and does his Type Right! When Aurora gets on it is usually an hour before she is done.

Denver's routine was broken and he was mad. Many times I am so busy with my work I don't want to deal with their squabbles; I let them work them out on their own. Today I had the time, energy and gumption to get involved. I asked how they could work this out. Suggestions were not forthcoming. I offered to let them use Dad's computer; neither liked that option. Finally, after 10 minutes, Denver calmed down and stated, "Well, I guess I'll do my work," and he went to his desk and found something else to do.

I really hoped the kids would get along better now that they are homeschooled. Sometimes they do, but many times they don't. Their personalities are just so different, and they both have very strong personalities in their own way. I'm pondering adding "Interpersonal Communications" to their courses for next year--the class I teach online! ( :

Ten Weeks of Tutoring...

In my Introduction to College Writing class that I teach for Kachemak Bay Campus I require my students to tutor writing for the semester. As chance would have it, three of my students wanted to tutor through Connections, and since the academic adviser there was having a hard time finding people who wanted/needed tutoring for their kids, she asked if my kids would like to be tutored. My daughter was flatly not interested, which was about what I expected. When my son found out he would be tutored by a college student (!!) he was intrigued and willing to give it a shot.

After finding a suitable match, Robert (my college student) and Denver began 10 weeks of tutoring. Denver is a forth grader using a middle school reading book. The content is challenging, and though Denver understands the words, the concepts can be more difficult to pull out. Tutoring allowed him to discuss the ideas and concepts and gave him intensive time with a non-authority figure (read: not a parent or teacher!) to explore the ideas presented.

In order to have enough material to go over each week Denver had to spend at least an hour or more reading and writing each day. He didn't appreciate the pressure, and he also found it tedious working from the same reading book every day. We broke things up by saying he would do 3 days of reading and writing in Jamestown (Best Short Stories), 1 day of his vocabulary book which included 2-4 paragraph writing assignments, and 1 day of fun writing that he could write whatever he wanted, which in his case is short stories. This was much more palatable to him and he would look forward to his "fun writing" days.

Through the course of the semester his reading comprehension seemed to improve, as he got fewer questions about the reading wrong. The bottom line, though, was that he really enjoyed the interaction with someone who he could have a conversation with and discuss ideas. He complained that at school he would beg his classmates to give him feedback about his writing, but they never came up with much. This has ended up as a very good experience for Denver and I'm glad that it worked out as well as it did.