Writing For Children, and Getting Children to Write - Part 4

Your imagination can bring ANYTHING to life.

Children do this on an hourly basis. The younger they are, the more naturally and often they do it.

Kids Workshop

Children can have friends who are leaves, footballs, pieces of toast shaped like boats and even items of clothing.

Personal effects can be personal friends, hard to let go. Inanimate objects have feelings and lives of their own.

Sitting at your desk they are able to create an adventure from what sits beside the computer you're now working on. A mouse, keyboard, speakers, paperclips, pens, pencils, rulers, mobile phones. Children imagine all these to be alive, if they choose, and can communicate with them, share thoughts between them all and take them on the kind of adventures most adults have forgotten all about.

The brain has an infinite capacity for creation, so when a child is asked to write a story, about anything they like, many will stop in their tracks and write nothing. Way too many choices to simply to choose one and go with it.

Next time, try this instead. Tell them they are not going to be marked on the story they write, no one will check for spelling or punctuation, and that grammatical mistakes will be ignored.

Tell them, they cannot go wrong with their story, There is no right or wrong answer.

Now ask them to select three words. For example: Mountain, penguin, guitar.

Then tell them the writing rules.

1. They must write for five minutes, non stop, without taking their pen off the paper, unless it is to dot the 'i's' and cross the 't's'

2. The first sentence must begin with one of the three words they chose, the other two words must be contained somewhere in the rest of the story.

3. They must not think. Ask them to allow all the thoughts inside their head to come out on paper and the screen. This goes against everything they are taught. Let them complain for a minute, then give them the rules again. Reiterate that they cannot go wrong, and no one has to see what they have written if they choose.

4. On your marks, get set, go!

5. During the five minutes if they stop gently remind them to keep going. Even if they are writing 'I don't know what to write, what's the point, I think they've gone mad.' It doesn't matter. All we're working on here is the process, of writing, the flow of creating.

6. After five minutes tell them to stop. Many of them wont want to, even the ones who five minutes ago said they hated writing. If they would like to share, let them. Validate what they have written.

7. They might have created an amazing story straight off, but more than likely most of what they've written will be random. A few will be brilliant. Most kids will be astonished at what they have just written. Most will have at least one gem of an idea they can use for a story, or something they want to expand on.

It isn't about writing a best selling novel every time they set pen to paper. It's about the process, and not judging the result. Give children the freedom to create, without judging the result, they will begin to produce work no one believed possible.

I've been using this technique in classrooms and workshops for years, with all age groups, and without fail it works a treat.

Praise, persistence, praise, persistence, non judgemental. Don't worry about the grammar, the spelling or punctuation. These will come with practice and reading. Just let them flow with the words, allow them to write how they would speak, and don't mark it. There is nothing that will destroy a potential writer more quickly than a page covered in red lines and hastily scribbled comments.

Resist!

And are you stuck for an idea with the story you are trying to get out? Try it!

Writing For Children, and Getting Children to Write - Part 4

Kids Workshop