November 19, 2009

I wrote a literary vignette about my history with writing in journals as a child (making this into my digital story). Reading Spandel's article on 6-trait writing, I especially related to the section on the beginning process of drawing from personal experience. Even though I eventually delved into creative writing, my early writing as a young person was all from my own unique stories. This part of the process of formulating ideas sounds easy to me as an adult. However, I think it is something that takes training and practice before it becomes so natural.

I can see this as I work with both my first graders in my dyad experience, as well as the sixth graders in my main placement. Those first graders are just at the tip of the learning process. Sure, we provide plenty of rich topics from which they can choose. And we would think there would be a wealth of experience from which to tap, but this part of the process seems nearly impossible for them. Maybe it's because the whole idea of writing is daunting to these youngsters! Many of them are intimidated whenever the task of putting pencil to paper is presented. We'd be happy if they could draw pictures of these ideas, or even just a few words. We're trying to teach them that they are full of engaging stories that others would like to hear. I've seen a lot of jumping on the bandwagon with ideas like riding a roller coaster, watching John Cena in the WWF. The sixth graders are more hung up on conventions of writing and seem to experience writer's block when first starting a writing assignment. I also see a lot of copying of ideas--the easy way.

Seeing the power of our written word--for me the journal writing that helped me grow up--I hope I have the magic to share with young writers the importance of memories and even the simplest of ideas. I hope I can coax from them the telling of what is important to them in their lives and how valuable it is for us to reflect on those things.

Spandel talks about how "writers write before they write" (p. 152). If we could teach kids that their everyday thinking about what matters to them is their "pre-write," we could ease them into viewing writing as fun and accessible.