How can I regenerate interest and ideas for writing? Sometimes literally walking away from writing is helpful. Going for a walk with my dog, Grace, especially on a fabulously glorious day like today, clears my mind. I click on the iPod, hit shuffle and we are off. I may mull over the moments of a school day or soak in my surroundings.
Other times I may read for awhile. Thank you slicers for thought-provoking and inspiring words. Last night’s writing stemmed from a connection to Ruth’s slice. Therefore, today when a student shared his dilemma in selecting a moment to write about, we paused to discuss this as a class. He felt that many of his slices were similar and it was getting boring. One of the girls suggested we get a jar for slips of paper with story prompts or ideas. Hmmm…not so sure I want to do that or maybe I should. At home and in the classroom, I love surrounding myself with photos, poems, quotes, books, flowers, music and much more for inspiration. We collaged our notebooks in the fall and have lists of ideas, but Slice of Life stories are different and still relatively new to us.
So anyway, back to the dilemma. Today I offered students the option of swapping notebooks to read a few slices and offer a short response on a post-it note. Tomorrow we have to discuss this process for those students that participated in the swap. We still have at least half of the class that has written all 17 days so far and I don’t want to lose them.
On Friday, I shared the theme from http://missrumphiuseffect.blogspot.com/. Last week, it was travel and this week it is something flowery. Each student received copies of a couple “travel “poems (mentor texts of inspiration.) Students may choose to write in different genres and several love writing poems. Thus far many turn out to be journal entries. I would be delighted to hear your thoughts or ideas. How do you feel about offering prompts? Thanks!
If you want to teach me to write, first you have to love me. ~AVI
I often find myself offering a prompt, but making it a choice. I have a girl in my class who only writes about animals. I tried every thing I could think of to get her to expand her horizons. No prompt ever satisfied her. I finally decided to let her go with it. Other kids will waste all sorts of time without a prompt. A prompt can often spark an idea. As I said, I like to offer them as a choice. I read a mentor text to go along with Slice of Life writing and challenge the kids to use the mentor text as a spring board. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Either way, the write instead of giving excuses.
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