“No matter where we [are] in our writing careers, we’ll always have to edit. We’ll never become so good that we outgrow the need for it.”

–Jody Hedlund

IT’S HERE! NaNoWriMo starts TODAY!

Short for National Novel Writing Month, NaNoWriMo is an amazing writing event that takes place every November.

I love that NaNoWriMo also has a Young Writers Program that’s open to children 17 and under. The challenge? Pump out a novel in 30 days.

According to the website, “The only thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The high-velocity approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.”

Free Resources

NaNoWriMo offers some great resources to help your students along their writing journey—”new and improved, 100% awesome, non-lame” Young Novelist Workbooks.

You can download the workbooks here absolutely FREE! Choose from:

• Elementary Student Noveling Workbook
• Middle School Student Noveling Workbook
• High School Student Noveling Workbook

Ready for a crazy, roller-coaster November? Register here for the NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program!

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Reprinted from the archives.

Writing doesn’t have to be “all work and no play.” By adding a dose of fun to your child’s writing time, you can actually turn an assignment into an eagerly anticipated experience!

Create a Costume Closet

Some children are delighted with the idea of theatre and acting. They might enjoy their writing time a bit more if they can dress up as their main character.

If your child likes this idea, assemble a Costume Closet or other place such as a suitcase or laundry basket.

Costume Accessory Ideas

• Shirt and dresses
• Suit jackets, vests, and trench coats
• Funny shoes
• Neckties and bowties
• Shawls, scarves, and feather boas
• Costume jewelry and eyeglass frames
• Hats and wigs
• Animal costumes or headbands
• Bits and pieces from old costumes such as a cowboy hat and holster, nurse’s cap and toy stethoscope, or eye patch

To find items to add to your Costume Closet, you and your child can visit some yard sales together, take a trip to a thrift store, or raid Grandma’s closet.

When your child is ready to work on his story, encourage him to choose several accessories and dress up like his character while he writes. Your costume closet might also help inspire him to create new characters. Then sit back and watch as writing time becomes an adventure!

 .  .  .  .  .

“Costume Closet” is just one of the many fun and creative activities WriteShop Junior will use to add spark to writing at the elementary level. This game appears in WriteShop Junior Book D, which is scheduled for release in Spring 2011.

“If you wish to be a writer, write.”

—Epictetus

This little article is a gem. Who knew Twitter could help you improve your writing skills?

From time to time, parents ask us whether WriteShop aligns with the Six Traits of Effective Writing.

6 + 1® Trait Writing is a model for teaching and assessing writing. Originally, it was intended less as a teaching tool and more as an evaluation tool to help teachers identify student strengths and weaknesses.

Although WriteShop wasn’t developed according to the Six Traits model, our products do offer comparable tools to teach, edit, and evaluate your children’s writing. After all, our goal is to help you become a more effective teacher, and these skills and tools just make sense—no matter what name they go by!

Creating Good Writers

Students become good writers through modeling, discussion, and plenty of practice. But most parents—even those who are intuitive writers—need specific guidelines and rubrics to help them teach writing systematically and effectively, including:

• Explicit instruction for how to teach the writing process (along with specific writing skills).
• Guided writing (modeling) and discussion. 
• Step-by-step student directions.
• Practical application of grammar and spelling to writing.
• Checklists, rubrics, and other tools to help edit and evaluate writing.

WriteShop and the Six Traits

Though our products may not fully align with the Six Traits model, both WriteShop I & II and WriteShop Primary give you the instruction and guidance you need to teach writing with confidence!

However, two favorite WriteShop tools—the Writing Skills Checklists and the Composition Evaluation forms—do meet many criteria of the Six Traits model.

The elements of the Writing Skills Checklist allow you to give your junior high or high school student valuable suggestions and a chance to improve his or her paper. And the Composition Evaluation form provides a rubric for effective, accurate grading.

Each of the Six Traits (listed below) is followed by specific elements WriteShop I and II look for in a composition.

Ideas

The main focus or purpose for writing

• Did the student follow directions for the assignment?
• Did he include lesson-specific content?
• Did he support his ideas with details?

Organization

The internal structure of the writing

• Did the student use appropriate topic and closing sentences?
• Did he use transition words when necessary?
• Did he communicate clearly?

Voice

The sense that the writer is speaking directly to the reader

• Did he write in the correct narrative voice for the assignment?

Word Choice

The use of concrete, colorful, precise vocabulary to communicate meaning

• Did the student use vivid, active, colorful words?
• Did he avoid vague, repeated, or overused words?
• Did the student limit use of passive voice (“to be” words)?

Sentence Fluency

The flow and readability of the text; effective use of sentence variations

• Did the student communicate clearly and avoid awkwardness?
• Did he use a number of interesting sentence variations?
• Did he use his tenses properly?

Conventions

The mechanical correctness, including spelling, punctuation, and grammar

• Did the student adhere to conventions of form?
• Did he correctly use punctuation, capitalization, and grammar?
• Did he spell correctly?
• Did he use correct sentence structure?

WriteShop Primary materials for kindergarten to third grade also align well with the Six Traits model, both for teaching and evaluating. For more information about WriteShop products, visit www.writeshop.com.

“Looking back, I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was too. But better far write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all.”

—Katherine Mansfield

When my children were small, they loved pulling out our family photo albums and looking through the pages. Whether they ended up giggling over leggings and side ponytails or reminiscing about a favorite stuffed toy, they were able to revisit key moments of their childhood with each turn of the page.

A Book About Me

Children love to look at their baby pictures and hear stories about when they were younger, don’t they? Here’s a simple, creative way to help your child record some of those special times by making “A Book About Me.”

Gather a handful of photos of your child at memorable times in her life. Look through the pictures together and talk about them. If your child doesn’t remember certain incidents, share stories and memories about those photos.

Ask your child to choose a few of her favorite photos from different stages—as a newborn, a toddler, and a four-year-old, for example (it’s OK if she can’t remember the event or moment when the photo was taken). Have her paste each photo to the top of a fresh sheet of blank paper.

Below the photo, ask her to write some things about the picture (or if she’s reluctant to write, let her tell you about the photo while you write down her words beneath). Prompt her with simple questions, such as:

• Where was the picture taken?
• How old were you?
• What’s happening in the picture?
• Who else is in the picture with you?
• What are you wearing?
• Why is this a special or good memory?

After she has finished, insert each paper into a page protector sleeve and place the sleeves into a slim three-ring binder in chronological order.

Ask your child to flip through her book of stories and share some of the memories with you. Encourage her to read her memory book to other family members too.

Isn’t this a great idea for helping your littles recall happy times? And as they get older, they can continue adding pages to their books.

. . . .

Although this isn’t a WriteShop Primary activity, you’ll find lots of similar creative writing projects for your younger children in the pages of these parent-friendly teacher’s guides. You can learn more by visiting the WriteShop Primary info pages or viewing sample lessons.

When your student begins to protest, “But I like it this way!” or “It looks okay to me,” it’s high time to introduce the concept of writing conventions.

Defining Conventions

We can define conventions as a set of generally accepted standards for written English. We use conventions to make our writing more readable. In other words, we do things in a certain way so the reader can figure out what we’re trying to say.

Conventions include spelling, punctuation, capitalization, grammar, and sentence structure. Students should:

• Apply spelling rules correctly.
• Use correct punctuation to smoothly guide the reader through the paper.
• Use verb tenses correctly.
• Write sentences that express complete thoughts.
• Demonstrate paragraph organization and use smooth transitions.

In addition, each kind of writing has its own conventions. For instance:

• Narrative writing must have characters, setting, and plot.
• Descriptive writing must appeal to the senses through use of vivid, colorful, precise vocabulary.
• Expository writing must inform, clarify, explain, define, or instruct.
• Persuasive writing must present an argument based on facts and logic, and attempt to sway the reader’s opinion.

Teaching Conventions

As a rule, you probably won’t teach a lesson on “conventions,” per se. There are just too many conventions, so it’s better to deal with them independently. Besides, individual concepts stick better when students can apply them in a practical way.

For example, it’s just natural to introduce character, setting, plot, and conflict when you’re teaching your children to write a narrative. You wouldn’t teach these as isolated elements and not have your kids actually write a narrative; the instruction and application makes sense because they’re including these elements in their story.

Similarly, instead of teaching grammar in isolation, make sure you’re providing an immediate way for students to apply their grammar lessons to a writing assignment. If your grammar program is introducing appositives, let’s say, require your child to include an appositive in the history report he’s working on.

Reinforcing Conventions

Diligently reinforce concepts by making sure your children are following conventions in their writing.

As they get older, there should be no more excuse for things like comma splices, incomplete sentences, and homophone confusion. These are the problems you must nip in the bud now, because they’re the very issues that will identify your students as poor writers later on—both in college and on the job. Therefore, give recurring problems focused attention.

The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation and All About Homophones are two great resources for teaching and reinforcing some basic but important grammar and spelling conventions. Check them out!

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

~William Strunk, Elements of Style

Conciseness boils down to this: expressing as much as possible without using unnecessary words or details. Concise writing is brief and precise, but that doesn’t mean it has to be dull and dry. Help your children apply some of these tips for more concise writing.

1. Stay on track

Staying on topic is a surefire way to write concisely. When your student takes tangents and rabbit trails, he loses his focus and ends up with cumbersome, awkward, or disjointed writing. Help him create an outline before he begins writing so that he’s less likely to wander off the path. 

2.  Be precise

The more concrete the word choice, the clearer the writing. Your child can be wordy and say “the shaggy gray dog with the long hair hanging in his eyes,” or he can simply say “the gray sheepdog.”

3. Use plain English

Many students mistakenly think that big words impress. In truth, effective writing uses simple, straightforward language. While a handful of mature, well-placed vocabulary words can raise the level of a story or essay, using too many can make a piece of writing seem verbose, over the top, and just plain hard to read. Unless you’re writing for a scholarly audience, don’t overdo the vocabulary.

4. Avoid super-long sentences

To train children to be concise, attach a word limit or try restricting the number of paragraphs and sentences they can use. This will help them say what they need to say in the space allotted.

When kids are first learning to write descriptively and use a thesaurus, the pendulum can swing wildly from three-word sentences to 20 or 30-word sentences. It’s okay to give them the freedom to play with words; they’ll find their center over time. Just know that you may need to gently correct if their zeal begins creating log jams in their writing.

5.  Don’t be redundant

Redundancy refers to extra words or phrases that should be cut out. Your student’s ability to write concisely will always trump filling a page with unnecessary text.

It’s not uncommon for beginning writers to repeat themselves. But such repetition bogs down the writing and makes the reader work too hard. Here are two ways to eliminate redundancy:

• Adding concrete details, facts, or examples instead of rehashing the same point.
• Slashing unnecessary words and phrases. Remember: when two words will do the trick, why use a dozen? Encourage your student to read each sentence and paragraph to see if he can cut out any words. His point will be clearer, stronger, and easier to identify.