No one right way to write

Now that summer is in full swing, I spend my weekday mornings tutoring, so this won't be long. (Aren't you relieved?). Yesterday was a fulfilling morning. I was privileged to have three very special youngsters at my table for the entire session. These kids were 5th and 6th graders, ranging from 10 to 12 years old. Most of the time, working with elementary students is far from my favorite thing to do, but these are different. They are taking their summer training very seriously, and want to do a good job. Two of them are writing students, the other takes reading. I'm speaking this morning primarily about the writing students.

The writing program used at the center is a highly structured one, in keeping with the overall philosophy of the nationwide setup. As a tutor, it is my job to teach the program. I don't mind teaching structured writing when it is what the students need, and most of the students we have do need to be taught structure. They are often timid about their writing, and need guidelines to help them come up with enough detail to fill five paragraphs, the requirement for a complete essay. (I am not advocating the traditional five-paragraph essay over more open-ended formats here. It just happens to be the one I am required to use on this job.) This need for a formal structure is often true for younger students. For many of their age group, this is their first experience with anything over a paragraph. Many do not understand what a paragraph is.

Not so with my current two. When I first had them at my table last Thursday, they had already begun work on the first stage of our process, the concept map. Their maps were so extensive I had to show them how to limit their topic to the five paragraphs the program insists on. We pulled out a portion from each map, and I taught the how to construct a formal outline - the next required step. The outlines contained so many details we shortened the scope of the papers once again, choosing one of their original Roman numerals as the basis for the first draft. The paragraphs they were writing yesterday ran almost two pages each, and I'm quite sure I will be getting little notes from their director today, cautioning me to have them write more concisely.

The thing is, these two kids do not need the particular structure we use. They do an excellent job of expressing themselves when they are simply given free reign to just write. I'm not minding my task. I don't think they are being hurt by learning to conform to a structure. It will be a good exercise in control.

I have taken extensive workshops in everything from the NJWP(New Jersey Writing Project - an extremely open and free-form method) to the highly structured and specific Jane Schaeffer[sic?] Method, developed by a teacher in California -kind of coast-to-coast. I was lucky enough, during my career, to work in situations that allowed me the freedom to individualize my writing instruction to fit each student's individual needs.

Over the years, I found that some students need to be given a highly defined structure to keep them going, and work best staying within its guidelines, while others find themselves cramped trying to create within such rigidity, and come up with a better finished product when allowed to just run with it. Nothing really better or worse here, just different.

Each one of us is an individual, with different personalities and different methods of operation. some of us create better given a structure, others of us are stymied by the same structure. And some of us apply both means, depending on the product we are working to achieve.

Ann

Ann, have you tried teaching the Lester Dent method? One of America's most prolific writers in his day, Dent sometimes claimed he wrote by setting up his typewriter so he was facing a blank white wall. Characters soon appeared on the wall and he just wrote down whatever they did. I'm not sure that everyone believed his story.
I've read that Thomas Wolfe did much of his writing while lying on top of a refrigerator. If true, this might explain the unbelievably sloppy copy he turned in.
Hope these little hints prove helpful. I doubt that you have many refrigerators in your classroom so the Dent method might be more practical.

I occasionally used something like the Dent method I learned from the NJWP. In this activity, the teacher says nothing at all, simply goes to the board and writes, "I am writing today. Will you join me?" then goes back to her desk, sits down, and begins to write, without saying anything to the class. It takes a while, but eventually one or two students will pull out paper and pen and start writing, then several others will decide that this is the thing to do, and eventually, everyone is busy writing whatever comes into their heads.

Ann