Like many students of mine, I too grapple with how to begin writing. I struggle with this because I am a product of “teaching to the (standardized) test.” I never found my writing voice until I started writing for expression and fun. Even then, I don’t think this truly happened until graduate school. Many things that I was forced to write with was a product of a given prompt and corrected for spelling, grammar, and length. It was always a cookie cutter writing with an introduction, body, and conclusion paragraphs. I never felt like I was writing for myself. I was just writing for what I knew my teacher wanted to read.
One of the most intriguing things about the writers notebook is that it is for my eyes only. Not one person is judging me on my spelling or lack of grammar. If I wanted to write about dogs, I can write about dogs. If I wanted to write about a secret feeling that I am trying to suppress, I can also do that. My writing doesn’t have to be pretty, or legible. However, it has the potential to be transformed into something of new beauty. All I have to do, is write it down.
‘Six Word Memoirs’ is something that I would like to introduce to my class. I see these ‘Six Word Memoirs’ as a more engaging way to introduce writing in my Language Arts class. I can use these to “promote writing for the sake of expression, to reinforce the tenets of the writing process, and to engage students in the authentic use of technology”
Upon further research of these ‘Six Word Memoirs’, I came across the website. On this website, you can sign up for daily six word memoirs, and even submit your own for contests. When I am a teacher, I think that I will encourage my students to explore the website for ideas and encourage them to submit their word for contests. This way, they know their writing is valued and capable of more praise from just their teacher.
Below is a few examples of ‘Six Word Memoir’s’ that I have come up with myself…
When children write, one important way to get them started is through appropriate leads. Leads are beginning sentences of the first paragraph. I believe that drafting leads sometimes are the hardest things to do as a writer. Once you write a lead, it is easy to get the ball rolling on your story. However, sometimes writing the lead takes up more than half of the writing process time (at least for me).
After reading chapter 5 in Mentor Texts (Dorfman and Cappelli), I really took to the ideas that they had for introducing children to writing leads. All of these leads, and the other ones included in Mentor Texts, are applicable to any narrative writings. Some of their examples that really stood out to me were…
Onomatopoeia: Clickety, clickety, clack. The roller coaster slowly pulled along up the steep hill. Foreshadowing: If only Billy had known that he was tall enough to ride the Rolling Thunder. Why did he always talk before he thought things out? Taking a Reader into the Past: When Billy was only two, his grandpa swung him upside down and round and round. At first he giggled and laughed, but when he started sputtering and gagging and spitting up everywhere, he rand for his grandmother. Weather: A soft rain spattered against the car windows as we drove down the New Jersey Turnpike. But there was a ray of hope, poking between the dark clouds with golden spokes.
Above is my example of a lesson titled, ‘Showing, Not Telling.’ For this lesson, I used a common experience, such as the first day of school, to engage my writers. I plan to achieve this by reading the book ‘The Day You Begin’ by Jacqueline Woodson. In this writing experience, I plan to have children interact with their feelings of loneliness and isolation that many of us face on the first day of school. Students will be prompted to show, not tell, these feelings.
