The Writing Process

The kids worked hard all week long writing about their New Year's resolutions. We started brainstorming using with a circle map and all thought of three things we'd really like to accomplish this year. Isaac wanted to play more football, race more and go to the movies more. Alyana wanted to eat more vegetables, love Jesus more and play more. Gabriella wanted to be kind, exercise and not steal. 

I used the example of a stoplight to help us talk about how good writers have a beginning, middle and end to their stories. We all agreed that their titles and opening sentences were like green lights, letting our readers know it's go-time! Time to let them know what it is they are about to read and time for them to get excited about that topic. The yellow light is the body of our stories where our readers get to slow down and read carefully the chunk of our writings. That's were a lot of the excitement is in our writing so they've got to slow down to make sure they don't miss anything. Not one detail! Finally, the closing sentence is like the red light, letting our readers know that we've finished and helping them to come to a complete stop while giving them a sense of closure. 

There is just something extra exciting about working so hard on something and getting to share that work with someone. Half of the fun of writing is having an audience to share it with, right? We decided that since sending mail is ALWAYS fun (and an fantastic motivator) we'd send a copy of our final work to someone, anyone; aunts, uncles, grandmas, grandpas, cousins and even friends. They were thrilled about the idea, finished their work up and sent their letters off. And I was just happy to see them happy. I really enjoyed watching them accomplish such a work.