SHARON’S BLOG
“I can’t think of anything to write about.”
“This writing assignment is boring.”
Sound familiar? It did around my house as well. My three children and I hit the wall and almost gave up on writing because it became so tough on all of us.
But I saw value in my children learning how to write, so I worked hard to figure out how we could have a successful writing class. Here are the solutions I came up with—and they really worked!
How I Saved My Own Writing Class
1. I stopped giving them writing assignments.
I know that sounds counterintuitive, but it worked for us. They were truly bored with the assignments, and so was I. We kept up with our grammar, spelling, and vocabulary lessons, though.
2. I developed fun writing prompts specifically for us.
For a month at a time, I made a list of writing prompts that I thought would interest my kids. The prompts were sometimes keyed to things we had experienced: events, trips, movies, and so on.
Some were tactile, like feeling a surprise in a paper bag (rubber bands, for instance) and describing the sensation on their fingers. Some were taste or scent oriented, like the time they tasted our family recipe of chocolate peppermint cream cookies around Christmas and described the taste or wrote about a memory that the scent triggered.
I wrote out each list with a pencil on lined paper, twenty-five at a time, and adjusted them as needed. I still have some of my children’s writings from these prompts, and they are super special to me now.
3. We wrote together.
When I wrote with my children, they saw the value in writing. It became a legitimate activity, not just an assignment someone somewhere dreamed up. We had fun writing and then reading our results to each other.
4. We wrote at the same time each day.
Just after lunch every day, I would get out the new writing prompt. This schedule helped my children know what to expect and helped them accept the fact that they were going to write.
5. I timed the writing sessions.
We wrote for ten minutes. Having an end in sight helped my children greatly. They knew this was not going to be a never-ending task but that they would find relief in just a few minutes. One son hated the timer because it made him feel nervous. It felt like too much pressure, so I hid the timer from him. That way, I knew when to free the writers but he did not feel the tension of the ticking clock.
All of this really did help to turn around our own writing class. Though it never was easy for some of my children, it became less painful when we switched to engaging writing prompts for a year. AND I enjoyed writing prompts so much that I kept doing it for Writing with Sharon Watson!
Do you want to try your hand at creating your own writing prompts? Learn my secret here. >>
Find more middle school prompts here, high school ones here, and combinations of grades here.
Yours for more vibrant writing and literature classes,
