|
ARTICLES |
|
by Karen
|
|
The Gentle Art of Learning MotherCulture ® |
|
by Guest Writers
|
|
The One Thing... |
|
by Homeschool Students
|
|
Articles Archive
|
| (none available yet) |
Given a choice between practicing the piano and writing a book report, many children will opt for recess. In my case, the choice was never in doubt. My parents insisted that I learn to play the piano, but with a mother who was an English teacher and a father who encouraged me to read before I was old enough to help with farm chores, the outcome was never in doubt.
When I was five years old, I decided to be a writer. I eventually could type 80 words a minute, but I never got the hang of coordinating all those white and black keys on the piano. I learned to appreciate music, but with writing it was love at first sight.
"I need just 10 more minutes," I would plead when called to the table for an evening meal. "If I don't work out this transition now, I'll forget it."
Grammar, punctuation, syntax, diction, figures of speech and other writing tools were honed and sharpened as I moved through school, into newspaper newsrooms as a reporter and editor and eventually into a university classroom as a writing teacher.
For more than a half century, writing had been my craft. Writing has been my profession. Writing had been my life. So, what was I to do when I retired? I could continue to teach at the university part time. I could continue to write. But what could I do in my spare time?
At that juncture in my life two granddaughters were being homeschooled, and I offered to help with the writing instruction. My experience of teaching writing to homeschool students began. The one-on-one weekly sessions soon expanded to groups of 10 to 20 middle-school age students, then high school students. A group of high school girls even met at night. At each meeting one of the girls would show up with a cake. We soon named the group, the Cake Eaters Club.
In the beginning, I discovered that most of the homeschool instruction was being conducted by young mothers. Dads were supportive, but moms did the teaching. Many of the teachers, however, didn't consider themselves qualified to teach writing. How unfortunate, I thought. Most of my students in the fifth and sixth grades were well acquainted with the basics of grammar and punctuation because of the homeschool programmed guides and exercises they had completed.
"So, how do I now teach my student to write?" was the standard question posed when I met with groups of homeschool teachers. Many of them felt they could not teach writing because they were not writers.
While the problem was serious enough to discourage them, I smiled inwardly, knowing that most of these young women were much better prepared than they realized. They wrote grocery lists, they wrote instructions to children, they wrote letters, they wrote reports.
"Write with your homeschool student," I suggested. "Complete the assignment and share your work with one another. Show your student that writing can be fun."
 |
|
| The Write Stuff Adventure Dean Rea / Great Expectations Co / 1999 |
"I never laughed so much in my life," one mother confessed "and I didn't know that I could write like that." So, the secret was out. While the mechanics of writing may be impersonal and seemingly formidable, the message can be simple and can produce a wide range of reaction, including laughter.
Of course, not all writing assignments will illicit laughter. But students, especially boys, will be more willing to write about space aliens than to churn out an impersonal book report. In any event, most students are not destined to be professional writers. That's okay. Our challenge is to help them become competent communicators no matter what career they follow. That challenge applies to the child who will become a carpenter, a steel worker, a firefighter, a surgeon, a teacher, a parent.
I created assignments as I taught homeschool classes. First, I invited students to write simple stories. I moved to personal and family history and the essay. I might have stopped with middle school, except my granddaughters and their classmates (or maybe it was their parents) prodded me to continue. So, during their high school years, I taught them how to write newspaper stories, feature stories, broadcast scripts, plays for the theater, advertising copy and short stories. They took photographs and wrote captions for their family albums.
"Why not write a textbook about your homeschool writing experience?" my wife asked.
"Not a bad idea," I thought and then did what I have done for a lifetime: I wrote. I revised and polished many of the homeschool writing assignments I had used in class and added tips for teachers in a course,
The Write Stuff Adventure, Exploring the Art of Writing.
Today I am asked such questions as: "My daughter doesn't mind writing but how do I get my son to write? If I'm not a writer, how am I going to critique my student's writing? How can I integrate writing instruction with other subjects?"
If you have questions or helpful suggestions about writing instruction send them along for posting to Homeschool Highlights, and I will be happy to share some additional thoughts with you online.
Many of these students also may be learning to play the piano like one of my granddaughters who accompanied me on this writing adventure. For years, she spent hours at the keyboard and studied music theory. I wept with pleasure as I heard her play during recital after recital. She was destined to be a piano teacher, or so I figured.
Meanwhile, she was writing simple stories, then essays, then newspaper news stories, feature stories, editorials and eventually short stories. During her junior year in high school, she surprised me by announcing that she intended to perform her senior piano recital a year early.
No more piano practicing, my granddaughter said. She had decided to be a writer.
