Strategies for young writers

Teaching Pre K-8, Apr 2000 by Sullivan, Jane E

Five techniques to help students use imagery in writing.

What makes a piece of writing capture our attention and hold us prisoner until the end of the piece? Action. Showing, not telling, the experts tell us. Descriptive details that include sensual reactions, the use of strong action verbs, incorporating dialogue - they all call up the imagery that makes writing effecfive. But how do we teach writers-in-training to do this? It's a question asked by first grade teachers and college professors alike.

* Details in a web. Teachers have found methods that answer this question. For example, the graphic organizer we call a web can serve as a prompt to include details as well. Mary Fallon, who teaches in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, models using webs for her third graders.

Jenny wrote about a place she loved to visit: Ocean City. In her first attempt, Jenny listed all the places she visited in this New Jersey shore town - the beach, the boardwalk, the shore house but went no further.

Mary asked Jenny to place her ideas in a web, with Ocean City at its center. The places became the threads leading outward. She then asked Jenny to pick a thread: her favorite thread.

"The beach," said Jenny.

"Now, Jenny," said Mary, "close your eyes and imagine you are there. Tell me what you see, what you do, what you feel." Jenny wrote her responses at the end of the "beach" thread, and then wrote:

I go down where the ocean wets the sand and bury my feet in it. It feels so good because it's cold. When I lie in the sand I can hear the ocean vibrate in my ears.

* Mental movies. There are other devices teachers use to remind students to focus on details. Lucy Callins suggests that we tell young writers to play "a movie in their heads" to foster such writing. I used that method when I conferenced with fifth grader Kyle. He was writing about a time when he had to make breakfast for himself. He had listed the basic steps in the process with little elaboration. I asked him to close his eyes and describe what he did. We talked about exactly how he "went" downstairs and how he got out the French toast Then we went back to the beginning again. This time I asked Kyle what he was thinking as he did these things. Here's Kyle's story:

"Hey, Mom," I said. I listened. No answer. She was still sleeping. I had to fix breakfast myself

Usually she gets the plates for me. I can't reach them. ...

* Favorite authors. Another strategy teachers use has students examine the writing of their favorite authors. Sherri Brecker, who teaches in the Westampton (NJ School District, combines the idea of a "movie in your head" with studying what good writers do. In an exercise with her second graders, Sherri had them study the text of Cynthia Rylant to see how she paints word pictures.

Together, they discovered how, in phrases like "Mrs. Crawford...always smelled of sweet milk" (When I Was Young in the Mountains), Rylant adds details on the senses.

In a follow-up mini-lesson Sherri asked students to close their eyes and picture a scene at breakfast or, perhaps, yesterday on the playground. "Make a movie in your head," she said. Then turning to five sentence-starters she had written on the board, she showed students how she could use a movie in her head about breakfast to finish the "five senses" sentences like Cynthia Rylant:

I see a bowl of cereal waiting for me.

I hear the toast pop up. ...

Following her lead, the children wrote their own sentences. The next day, Sherri returned to the sentences she had written, drew a line through the first two words and wrote new sentences from the remainder.

I see a bowl of oatmeal waiting for me. A bowl of oatmeal was waiting for me an the table.

I hear the toast pop up. The toast made a squeaky noise when it popped up. ...

Sherri invited her students to do the same with their own sentences. Later, as they wrote in their notebooks, the second graders remembered and applied the lesson to their own writing.

* Sentence and prompt. Some teachers give students a lead sentence and show them how to add details that paint the picture. Kelly Petrucci, who teaches in Mays Landing, New Jersey, used the sentence "Playing at recess is fun" to show her students how she could add sentences like "We play tag... We jump rope" to make the picture.

Dialogue. Using dialogue in a narrative is another device that can move the action forward and hold the reader's attendon. Its effect can be magical. In a personal narrative she was working on, Libby Cowherd, one of my graduate students, converted a sentence into dialogue with little effort. In her first draft, she had written, "I remember when Jackie prayed for a cat." In her revision, Libby transformed that simple, rather flat sentence into humorous dialogue between mother and daughter:

"But why can't I have a eat?" Jackie whined as we rode home from church that hot summer day.

"If God wanted you to have a cat, He would send you one," I replied.

"I've been praying but God ain't listening. Can't you just give me a cat?" Jackie's whining was starting to grate on my nerves.