While I work on a lengthy blog post with a book review, here is a poem from one of my young writing students. His name is Peter (Engish name), and he is a fourth grade non-native English speaker. He and his brother were born in South Korea and lived for two years in Japan before moving to the US a few years ago. They meet with me once a week for math and English tutoring. Peter has a great sense of humor, and I am honored that he let me publish his poem here.

Fight at Bed

I fight at bed.
I fight at bed with my brother.
He puts his foot on my chin.
I wake up and hit his leg.
When I wake up his foot is on my chin again.
I hit him again.
I get very mad.
I get very very mad.

Tags: Poetry, literacy

One of my pursuits this summer, when I wasn’t as active on this blog, was writing step-by-step articles on instructables.com. Projects included everything from a camp shower enclosure to a 35-cent book weight.

This type of writing, the how-to essay, is great for students to practice order words (first, next, then, finally), as well as to understand how to organize their work so it makes sense. See an example of a second-grade student’s how-to essay here.

My site has been going through some growing pains as a software update was applied, and some kinks are still being worked out from that. The programs for children have been updated; be sure to check that page for great learning opportunities this fall! Thank you for your patience as I continue to try to make everything work smoothly.

Tags: Website, writing, Essay writing

This post was originally published on the Patch on August 5, 2011.
I was recently working with a young student who had a hard time figuring out when to add commas or periods in his writing. I had given him a worksheet made from a paragraph I wrote and from which I removed proper capitalization and end punctuation. All he had to do was rewrite the paragraph with correct periods and capitals.

Even though this sounds simple, he had a hard time determining where a period should go. Instead, he sometimes added a comma instead or skipped a period entirely.

After trying several approaches to help him, a new thought occurred to me. “Listen to the music of the words,” I said. I compared punctuation to rests in musical notation, with which he has some experience. “Commas are like short rests, and periods are like long rests.”

I then hummed the paragraph without the words for him once, and then again while pointing to the words I was humming so he could follow along. He said it was almost like he could hear me saying the sentences. I said, “Yes, the music and rhythm of language help give it meaning.” To show some contrast, I read the same paragraph in an absolute monotone with no pauses for punctuation whatsoever. “Much more boring, isn’t it?” I said, and he agreed.

With this new tool under his belt, my student was able to successfully detect when to add periods in the rest of the paragraph. He continues to use this tool months later.

I have taught this method to other struggling students, and it’s helped them, too. A search for similar methods didn’t turn up anything online, so I wonder if this is a new idea. I hope this way to use “musical intelligence” adds another useful tool to other writing teachers’ tool kits!

Tags: Multiple intelligences, Music, Proofreading

Nearly all writers have experienced writer’s block. There are many ways to overcome it, including by using a variety of prompts. I have used Rory's Story Cubes, which the students and I love, writing kits, and more.

Today an idea came to me to make a board game with writing prompts. My students have had fun and have written good stories while playing it. Please feel free to download the game and use it as you please. You may even find a way to use it in conjunction with the story cubes. Enjoy!

Tags: Creative writing, NaNoWriMo, writer's block

One of the projects I assign to my students is to write a process essay. This is an essay that gives step-by-step instructions about how to do something they know how to do. Today’s contribution comes from Christina S., a second grader whom I tutor in writing, and who invented this technique for making leaf purses. For such a young student, it turns out to be more of a process paragraph than a long essay. It is a good way to practice sequencing words and transitions.

How to Make a Leaf Purse, by Christina S.

Have you ever wanted to make a leaf purse? Well it will be little. First, get four leaves. Put them like a plus sign. Then fold the top and bottom. Now the sides. Next, get a long piece of grass and tie it. Now you can decorate however you like it. You can put stickers, glitter, sequins, paint and ribbons.

Watch the video to see the steps in graphic form.

I love creative projects! If you would like to see some of the things I have created and written process essays to describe, please see http://www.instructables.com/member/susanrm/ .

Tags: Process essay, Composition

As of today, I am live as a blogger on the local Patch, an online newspaper! Read my first entry concerning an educational green building possibility here: http://peekskill.patch.com/blog_posts/verplanck-enhancement-plan-and-education .

Tags: blog, green building

Among my students are three brothers in middle school whom I tutor in writing. They are all honors students whose parents hired me as a tutor for enrichment.

One activity I’m doing with them is to write a letter to the president. It’s simple enough to do: the White House website has an easy-to-use contact form, like those found on many websites. Or, of course, the letter can be mailed.

The activity sounds straightforward: the students should write about an issue that is important to them and send the letter to the president. It is an opportunity to discuss civics and current events, and to practice formal letter writing.

But it’s harder than it sounds, even with advanced students in middle school. First, despite their school classes in current events, most American children don’t feel connected to what’s happening in the world or in politics, or why these issues should matter to them. So we have spent a lot of time discussing some hot topics, like health care, food supplies, international wars and climate change. They really didn’t know much about any of these areas, so it was an opportunity for them to research and get to know more.

Once they each picked a topic, the next hurdle was what to say and how to say it. Getting the letters factually correct and written in a respectful tone was the first hurdle. Making sure the issues really mattered to them was the next. Since two of them chose health care costs as a topic, we spent a while discussing what health care would cost when they become adults if the costs keep rising the way they are now. We discussed the other costs of living and what they would be able to afford if they had to pay, say, $20,000 or more per year in health care costs. This helped bring the issue home to them.

This week I also encouraged them to put themselves inside the picture: let the president know why these issues matter to them. I think if more people involved themselves in this way, either as children or as adults, it could change the quality of our country for the better.

Oh, and as I was leaving today, their mom told me, with a beaming smile, that the boys really enjoy our classes. Imagine, middle school boys who enjoy having an extra hour and a half of school-like work added to their schedule each week!

Tags: Social studies, Current events, Politics

On Friday, my young writers and I had a Thank Goodness It’s Over party to celebrate our accomplishments during the month. The TGIO party is a well-established tradition for any NaNoWriMo group. I have always used it to showcase and celebrate each individual child’s writing.

We met at a family’s home, and each child had five minutes to read an excerpt from his or her story. I was impressed by the quality of the writing; three years of doing Nano for most of them has led to exceptional storytelling abilities in these young writers. During the reading part of the get-together, we had the usual stage fright issues, eventually overcome, and we had to practice being a good audience, also as usual.

The new experience was that one of the students had written a song and dance into his story, and he read us the description. His mother encouraged him to perform it for us, which he did. What followed was an expression of pure delight and joy as the boy rapped out a song and did a rhythmic, but hilarious, dance with it. We all laughed so much, along with him, that nobody managed to videotape the performance, but I did manage to snap a photo or two. That was an experience I will never forget.

After we all had a chance to read from our stories, we all enjoyed snacks, and the children played together. It was a perfect ending to a great program. The photo below is me with most of the participants (some couldn’t make it) holding their winner certificates.

Today is Wednesday, December 1, and November is finally over. All of the students in my program, Your Greatest Writing Adventure Ever, achieved their goals of writing a story in the month. The word count goals ranged from 1,500 to 4,700 words, and their ages ranged from seven to ten. What an amazing accomplishment! Not only the writing, but the fun they had doing it.

I am so proud of everyone, but I’m also relieved that NaNaWriMo is over. In fact, doing this program is such a mammoth accomplishment that it’s pretty much a requirement to have a TGIO (Thank Goodness It’s Over) party at the end of the month. I will be attending two: the party for my students on Friday night, and the New York City party for grown-up Nano-ers like me who wrote the full 50,000 words. Time to celebrate our accomplishments!

All the students in my program will have the opportunity to self-publish their illustrated works through StudentPublishing.com.

On that note, my own novel, a futuristic biotech thriller, doesn’t really inspire me to revise and publish it. However, I do think it would make a good screenplay, so my rewrite may be during Script Frenzy in April. That may also be my next group writing program, so please get in touch if you would like your child to participate!

Now that November is over, I should also be able to write for the blog more regularly again. I just did not have the time during this month. Writing 1,667 words per day in a story is quite a commitment! I’m glad for the experience, though, as it helps me relate even more to the struggles of my own student writers.

Imagine my delight today to find out from one of my young writers that my students’ anthology from last year had been featured on the NaNoWriMo Young Writers’ Program blog in late October. I’m kind of surprised we didn’t hear about it sooner, but it’s inspiring to discover it now, since so many of us are struggling with word counts and the challenge of finishing our stories by the end of the month.

You can watch the video below, or view the video on the NaNoWriMo YWP site. The anthology is called The Sun Shines on the Golden Dragon and the Mysterious Wizard, But Not on the Fat Smelly Alien. It is available for purchase on Amazon.com, and any royalties go to support The Garden Road School, a wonderful, progressive, non-profit school.

If you would like more information on the anthology, please visit the About Susan page of my website.

Tags: NaNoWriMo, ywp, Anthology, Creative writing

Yesterday was the first day of NaNoWriMo, and it began with a bang. My group has seven bright, eager children in it, and we all dove in to our writing projects yesterday.

Prior to that, we had a couple of meetings in which we worked on character development, understanding what plot is, setting expectations, and deciding on word count goals. I think my students from previous years underestimated their abilities yet again, if yesterday was any measure; they seem to grow their ability to write fluently almost exponentially each year. I’m impressed.

Even more impressive, one of our new members, a second grader, outstripped everyone in word count during a word war or two. This was the same little girl who couldn’t even get started at first. She was so excited and proud by the time her mother came to pick her up.

Like every year, I write alongside the students, and we all share excerpts from our writing in progress. Last year, however, I was writing a children’s book, while this year I’m writing an adult thriller. This means my word count will need to be higher, and I won’t be able to share all of it with the children. I’m also less enthusiastic about the subject matter; it was a plot idea that came to me months ago, and it’s just not as alive in me now. I started without any idea of characters, settings, or even specific plot ideas, so it was really stretching to get anything down.

On the bright side, though, I did reach over 1,700 words last night, the minimum to accomplish 50,000 words in a month, and the story wheels started spinning in the shower this morning. So maybe it will take on a life of its own yet again.

The write-ins are such motivators to get the ball rolling that I’m glad we held a meeting this Monday. We will meet again on Friday for those who want to get together. Be in touch if you’d like to join - it’s not too late!

Tags: writing, Children, literacy

Good news! The virtual classroom for our awesome YWP program is up and running. As soon as participants are fully signed up, they will receive login information.

I have received a number of inquiries about the location of the program. The answer is: it’s up to us! Some people are north, some are south, some are middle... we will make it work, even if I travel a couple of times a week. Carpooling can help too.

Remember, if you want to facilitate this, we would love your help. Let us know if you have good meeting places, and what dates and times work for your family.

Tags: Teaching, writing, ywp, NaNoWriMo, Children

Barnes and Noble launched its new pubit! service today, where authors can upload their manuscripts and have them automatically converted to ebooks.

While I’m not crazy about the name (as I had my concerns about the iPad name initially), it looked like it might be easier to use than the Amazon Kindle service. I published my printed books using CreateSpace, but making them into Kindle ebooks looked pretty convoluted. So I gave this service a try.

I went through the process as far as uploading my book file and previewing it with their Nook previewer. It’s a nifty service, and it showed me how terrible the results would be. Going from my beautifully typeset, illustrated book that had been laid out in Pages, exporting it to Word (.doc), and then importing it into their format made a hash of the layout. PDF is not supported, which is probably good, because reading a PDF on these readers can be very tough - the text does not usually flow well.

The next step would be to edit the original file and/or to edit the changed file. Since I know HTML pretty well, I’ll probably have faster results with the latter than the former.

I also made a stop by the Kindle publisher. It is a little more difficult to do the initial publishing steps, but it also looks like there may be more flexibility. Without much time, though, I would probably find the pubit service easier to use.