How to Teach Writing When You Don’t Feel Confident [Show]

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Gretchen Roe: 00:00:04.994
Welcome to The Demme Learning Show. Our mission here is to help families stay in the learning journey wherever it takes them. This bonus episode was previously recorded as a webinar and was not created with the audio listener in mind. We hope you will find value in today’s episode. Good morning, everyone. My name is Gretchen Roe, and it’s my pleasure to welcome you this morning to this terrific opportunity to talk about something that strikes fear in the hearts of lots of homeschool parents. Today, we’re going to talk about how to teach writing when you don’t feel confident in writing. And I have the privilege of being joined by my colleague, Kim Wampole, who is our Language Arts Curriculum Lead.

Kim Wampole: 00:00:48.842
Thanks, Gretchen. Hi, everyone. I’m Kim. I’ve been working at Demme for a little over a year. I was a teacher before that for 18 school-years. I spent most of my time in elementary school in Washington, DC. So I live right in Maryland. I would drive into DC to teach mostly at private schools. And I also worked summers there at a school that had pull-out programs or summer programs offered to students with diagnosed reading disabilities, from a range from about sixth grade to kindergarten. So that’s pretty much where I spent most of my time. Came over to Demme, I’m sure everyone knows because of the pandemic, so.

Gretchen Roe: 00:01:42.352
But we are delighted to have Kim with us. She has made tremendous contributions to the company since she’s been here. She’s also a terrific artist. The picture you see behind her, the painting, is of her dog, Stella. And so she brings many talents to the table. Today, I roped her into having this conversation because I’ve just come off of two homeschool conferences and had lots of conversations with parents who say that teaching writing is the bane of their existence, and they would like some assistance with regard to that. So we have lots of things to talk about today. And I think where I want to begin is, Kim, can you offer parents some affirmative words. When they’re anxious about choosing a curriculum, why is it so advantageous to be in a homeschool environment to teach writing?

Kim Wampole: 00:02:36.141
I think it’s advantageous because you can tailor the curriculum directly to your student and meet them where they– where their needs are. You can create interest because you can have them choose things that they’re– choose to write, like their favorite story or their favorite author. And you have a lot of freedom in creating those projects.

Gretchen Roe: 00:03:01.512
Terrific. And one of the things that we’re going to talk about today is WriteShop, which is the newest acquisition for Demme. And Kim was integral in that selection process and helping us bring it to fruition. And she has a PowerPoint that she’s going to walk us through today in just a few minutes. Because I think this will help frame for a parent who maybe is trying to figure out, “Where do I pick up this stick and how do I carry it?” This will give parents a better idea of what it looks like to have a WriteShop writing experience. But before we begin there, Kim, how can I teach writing if I’m not a good writer myself? If I am not confident in me?

Kim Wampole: 00:03:50.030
Well, pick a model. So if you’re not confident in your own writing ability, find an author find a short story that does demonstrate what you want your child to write like. So I like to kind of equate writing and art. So if I want to learn a new art technique, I find an artist that I really like that is using that medium. And I look at what they’ve done. And if it’s Bob Ross, I just watch the video and do what he’s doing. I imitate it. So you and your child can imitate good writing. It’s an actual writing technique. It’s not just pulled out of the air. So find some models that are outside of yourself and use those models to teach what you want to teach.

Gretchen Roe: 00:04:43.712
Terrific. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right? It helps us get– it helps us get started. One of the things that several parents said here in their questions is writing is not fun in their household. And I have been known to say not everything has to be fun. But in your opinion, how does a parent make a writing experience more enjoyable for their student?

Kim Wampole: 00:05:18.610
So I will go over in the PowerPoint. I think I’ll hit on this a lot more. But I’ve always found, one, trying to find that really high-interest topic and reading that. So if your child loves sports, can you find a bunch of sports stories? Can you find some common elements and then model a piece of writing on sports? So get them talking and get them interested in a topic. And then say, “Well, it sounds like you have a character here who loves to play baseball. What problem might your baseball-playing character have?” and kind of use that as your way in. So you want to find that little tiny way in. And it might seem ridiculous that you’re writing five sports stories in a row [laughter] and doing nothing but that or taking that one baseball-playing character and writing multiple projects on it. But you’re trying to find that way in. Once your child creates even the tiny amount of interest, if they can then get someone to respond to their piece of writing in a positive way, they’ll start to see the purpose behind writing. So we want to get in, whether that means that you’re writing for your child because they just don’t want to pick up the pencil, but get those ideas going. And then get your kid to the purpose of writing, which is to share it and to communicate. And then if you can do that, then you can kind of branch off, right? You can move over a little bit, maybe get away from that baseball-playing character and do something else with it.

Gretchen Roe: 00:07:06.212
And I think that’s one of the things that makes WriteShop a really terrific program is it’s not prescriptive. It doesn’t tell you you have to write about Roman soldiers. It tells you to pick a topic that interests your students. So that I think helps heighten the desire for a student. If they can write about something that interests them rather than something you’ve assigned them, you might find a better experience. So with that, Kim, let’s dive in a little bit with your presentation and talk in more depth about what parents will find within WriteShop?

Kim Wampole: 00:07:43.988
So reluctant writers, there were a lot of questions that we saw about reluctant writers, struggling writers, just all kinds of issues, trying to get interest, create fun, create all of these things, get more out of your student. So when I meet a reluctant student, the first thing I try to do is get really curious about where it is. Where is this reluctance actually stemming from? So yes, I can say I’ve had plenty of students who were reluctant writers. I would say they might have fallen into similar categories, but each kind of presented their own unique reason for this reluctance. The first thing we want to do is see if it’s skills-based. And by skills, I’m talking about the mechanics. Does it physically hurt their hand to hold a pencil for 20 minutes or more? If so, can we relieve that burden? Are they having trouble forming their letters? Is their letter formation so slow, or does it take up so much of their thinking that their writing cannot keep up with their thoughts or their ideas? Or is it their spelling? Are they either so worried about spelling or lack so many skills in spelling and have so much concern around their spelling that, again, their ideas are up here, they’re being taught, their spelling isn’t keeping up, and therefore that idea gets lost or they just get frustrated? So one of the ways that you can test to see if this is going on is to do some copy work or to do a dictation and see and watch their mechanics. So if I give a nine-year-old may be part of a sentence that is a familiar sentence or an easy sentence, something they could read on their own. Can they hold that chunk in their head and write it without having to ask me to repeat it? Is that chunk taking so long that they forget what I said, even though it was something common? It’s not an uncommon or a crazy sentence. It’s something typical.

Kim Wampole: 00:10:13.574
So if you start to see those struggles, then you know that this might be a skill-based reluctance. They just might be struggling with these mechanics. Your approach is going to be different, right? If I have a skill-based reluctance, then the adult being the scribe is my best approach to getting my kid to write and getting over that reluctance. So they’re giving their ideas. I’m writing because I can write faster and I don’t have to worry. Then they can go through and do editing and revising on their own, those smaller pieces of writing. And eventually, hopefully, that stamina will build up and those skills will catch up. But I do want to relieve that burden. The time to teach writing when we’re teaching writing is not the time to work on stamina or the formation of letters or their spelling skills. You can find other time to work on those things and they should be developed, but it’s not during the writing process. So that’s when we would have a scribe. So we check out the skills, check out the mechanics. Everything seems to be going fine there. Now you need to find what else might be the cause of this reluctance. Could it be a matter of interest? Maybe they’re just disinterested, but then dig a little deeper. Try to figure out, is it just this project that you started them on? Is it the method that you’re using to teach writing? Is it the time of day? Did they do every other subject and now they’re tired? And try to dig in, why aren’t interested in this. So this is where it might get a little frustrating because you feel like you’re trying programs or you feel like you’re trying things and nothing seems to be working. But if you can truly identify that it is a level of interest, keep picking their brains and keep maybe trying the free samples of things out until you hit on a way in, right? We need to create that path in and get that one piece of writing or that one project that clicks. And once we have that path in, then you can figure out what else to do and kind of grow that. Now you’ll notice off of the interest, way far away, I just have the general lack of interest. Try not to go there until you’ve eliminated everything else that could possibly be a cause of this reluctance. We want to believe that everyone has at least some interest or some way in. So we really do want to exhaust everything before we just say a child is disinterested.

Kim Wampole: 00:13:06.185
And writers of all different genres and places and newspapers, there’s so many ways into writing that we really can’t exhaust a lot of ideas and paths before we make that general conclusion. What I found in my classroom was sometimes it was the length of the process that just made kids shut down. Either the length of the process caused a lot of anxiety or worry, maybe because they didn’t understand the process or the process just seemed burdensome. But maybe there was some anxiety there around the whole process for, “How do I do the process?” or understanding the importance of each part. And sometimes the length of the process just bored kids. So how can we pick up the process or make each step really meaningful and kind of poppy to get over that boredom of this idea of working with this piece for three whole weeks, and then I read it, and then I reread it, then I edit it, and then I have to go back, and then I publish it, and now I have to share it. If there’s boredom there, maybe we can eliminate a few of the steps. Maybe we can punch one of them up that’s really creating some boredom around it or shorten just that step until they kind of start to see more of the purpose of that. And the last one is just telling your students what the purpose of writing is, and then creating instances where they can see the purpose of their own writing. So think of the purpose of writing as communication where you get to choose each of the words that you use to communicate your ideas. So unlike talking, as I’m terrible at talking in front of people and presenting, so I would be much better if I just wrote this all out. That’s why I created a slideshow because I get all tongue-tied.

Kim Wampole: 00:15:17.843
But when I write, I get to choose each word and I can think about each sentence. So I can communicate really, really clearly in my writing. We need to get kids there and understanding the purpose behind the assignment. It gives them a little bit of power. It makes them understand their choices a little bit better. So if you think it might be an issue with understanding the purpose, is it a lack of understanding or a lack of caring? So those are two different approaches. Sometimes the lack of understanding is just walking your child through their first project, publishing it, and then seeing the reaction from an audience member. That could be a single person, not not the instructor, but a single other person, or it could be a small group like the rest of the family. They could send a letter and get a letter in response from a grandparent or someone, but to start to really see the purpose of writing as a tool for communication will go a long way to kind of overcoming that reluctance. If it’s a matter of not caring for the purpose, we’re again going to try to find that path that creates that sense of caring. So this is when we have to go back, kind of like interest and trying some different things out until they really actually see the impact of this form of communication. So again, that one kind of a sticking point, but try some different things out. You’ll see in WriteShop there’s a lot of different genres. There’s a lot of different activities to do with the projects. So it kind of creates a lot of different ways to kind of get in and create some caring around this form of communication. I don’t know, Gretchen, if you have any follow-up questions before I–

Gretchen Roe: 00:17:07.304
No, I think that’s really– I really liked what you said. I was taking notes about getting really curious on where your reluctant writer’s reluctance really is. And I think that makes sense because when parents say to us, and a lot of parents said to us in the things that they posted, that they’re really having children who are frustrated. And so if we can sort of peel back the layers of an onion as parents and figure out where that frustration is being generated from, I think it’ll make a tremendous difference for parents. Can you talk a little bit about the process now with your PowerPoint? That would be amazing.

Kim Wampole: 00:17:53.483
Sure. I really like the process of WriteShop. When I first looked at WriteShop, I found that it was kind of very similar to what I had done in my classroom when I was creating, writing curriculum. So we had a lot of questions that were about, how do I know what skills to teach? So I actually kind of wanted to create a slide before this. We’re going to go back to that idea of having a model text. So every level of WriteShop has modeling. It’s of different kinds at different levels, but there’s a model. So I picked all the samples here from Book E, which is in the junior set. And I tried to pick it because it’s kind of right in the middle of a sweet spot between all the products. So I’ll talk about this, but there’s a model text. This is the mystery writing unit. So there’s a model text. It’s a mystery. And if I were writing this curriculum myself and I wanted to write about mysteries, what I would do is I would find my model text and I would look at it and see what can I pull out of that model text that I can then use as the skills that I’m going to teach. So they pulled out the parts of a mystery as a genre. So having your detective, having your suspects, giving some clues, building a mystery, and then having that final solution. So they’re going to build some skills here. Before any writing happens, we’re going to build the skill of learning what a mystery is and the main elements of it. In here, they’re using this simple card game that goes over some of these keywords, suspects, clues, problems, solution. And they’re just playing a game. It’s all you and your students talking through these elements. So that’s one skill. That’s our writing genre skill, right? Then they do– sorry, the other skill that you’ll see is how it is here. So in the model and teach, one of the skills that was pulled out in the grammar packet is quotations and using dialogue to keep your story going. So they use that model text and they said, “Oh, mysteries are a great time to introduce dialogue because the detective has to interview these suspects. So it’s the perfect back-and-forth time.” But then you have to think if you were creating your own curriculum or you’re trying to do this on your own, what are the other things that a student needs to know in order to create a quote? They need to know all their end marks and the purpose of all their end marks. They need to know the purpose of a comma and how to use a comma. So maybe the unit before you teach friendly letters or writing letters because of all the comma use. So you can talk about the purpose of comma for separation. That will make sense then when you afterwards go to teach dialogue, but it’s not any more scientific than that than putting things in order and thinking through what the student needs to know in order to have this new learning. So I know there were a lot of questions of what skills to teach when, but you can use the model texts to figure out which skills to teach when and then kind of shift them around and see what builds on one another. So anyway–

Gretchen Roe: 00:21:36.776
My observations here, Kim, is that you’re engaging in the process of teaching writing here, but the student still hasn’t really put a pencil on paper yet. What we’re doing is we’re exploring here. And that allows perhaps a reluctant writer to enter in where they might have just been hit with a writing-the-gate sort of fosters that reluctance. In this way, this sort of gives them an on-ramp to the writing process, which is helpful.

Kim Wampole: 00:22:07.204
And hopefully building that excitement around it and just enjoying some of these writing activities. So we don’t have to put a pencil on paper. Afterward, we kind of don’t put a pencil on paper. And then if those mechanical skills are your issue, you’re going to continue not to put a pencil to paper because you’re going to be described. Yeah, so the model and teach in the background here is the sample text. It’s a very short story that tells a mystery and it has all of the elements of a mystery. The reason it’s so short is so that you can keep referring to it and rereading it and it’s not going to be a huge burden. So yes, there are mystery chapter books and that would be very cool if outside of this your child were reading mysteries right now for these three weeks or they had a chapter book going, but that huge book can’t be our model. We want to find these shorter pieces so that we can keep going back in and it doesn’t become this overwhelming time-consuming burden. For the model and teach, you use this model writing first. And you look in it and you see from that skill builder beam if you can find those key things. Can you find the clues? Can you find the suspects? Can you see what the detective is doing? Is there a good solution at the end that brings you some satisfaction as a reader? So then you’re looking through all these elements. Then you’re looking at the dialogue and actually looking at that mechanical skill of putting a quote and how that dialogue is kind of separated, right, when our characters are talking back and forth. So you’re using this model to teach that grammar and mechanical aspect as well as the genre aspect. All again, before we’re writing, these are all pre-writing activities So the next part of modeling is to create one together. I like this idea that it is together so that the burden isn’t completely on the parent to come up with some great creative idea. Your job as the instructor is to guide the conversation and make sure those elements are showing up. It’s not a perfect piece of writing. It’s not edited or revised right now. You are just creating with your child out loud. You’re the scribe, even if your child doesn’t have those mechanical writing issues, and you’re provided with this nice script. So those of you who aren’t confident in your ability to teach writing, to get those ideas out of your child, or to direct the conversation in an age-appropriate, skilled developing way, these dialogues and scripts are provided for you with possible answers and ways to praise and ways to carry the conversation forward, but also ways to use that model text to write your new piece.

Kim Wampole: 00:25:14.018
So you’re doing a lot of the things that are done in the model text. The child is the detective. They’re not talking about another detective over here and then the suspects. They are the detective. They can give themselves a fancy name, but that’s in that story. The story is told in the first person. Then they’re also starting off the same way. The food mystery is like eating your favorite food. They’re also going to be doing that. So you really are recreating in a new way. I don’t know if anyone had this thought maybe when I was talking about it, this idea of using choice to create interest. There’s a threshold for choice. We want choice. All humans want choice because we feel in control. But once we get too much choice, we actually shut down and just give up. It’s outside of writing. It’s everywhere in our lives. If there are 30 kinds of yogurt at the store, I just can’t decide. I don’t know which one is the best for me. Is it Greek? Is it French? I don’t know. I have too much choice, and then I’m overwhelmed. Do I do all the research and figure it out? How do I narrow down these choices? So what we want is to have a bit of choice, but not so much choice that we just shut down. So if you have a student who’s facing a writing prompt, and they’re just like, “Oh, I don’t know what to write,” they might just be overwhelmed by the amount of possibilities. I was thinking of one that I always saw as like, “Look out your window and notice something about spring that’s happening and write a story.” Well, I mean, I guess I see some flowers. I don’t see a character. I mean, my character could be– it’s just out there. I have to think of this character on my own. I see some flowers. I guess my story will have flowers in it. There’s just so much possibility. It’s so overwhelming. What if I was given the character, or what if I was given the setting and the problem? So I still have control, but not so much control that I just can’t. I can’t think of all of it.

Kim Wampole: 00:27:36.049
So then you create one together, another part of modeling. All the levels have it on some level. So the primary books have this idea of modeling, and talking things out, and creating together. And the teen books, books one and two, also have modeling. The teen books have a lot more provided student-created models so that you and the student can kind of see what type of writing should be happening and comparing some of those samples. So you might have more than one model where you’re looking at two side by side and seeing how different people or different authors have handled the skill that they’re working on or the genre that they’re working on. So we’re still not writing. I mean, the parents written, you’ve come up with this idea of you’ve written an entire story together that models after the main story, the missing phone in this instance. Then you’re going to do some more skill-building. Again, this is still before you’re writing, your child is writing on their own. They’re going to look at a new element for their story writing, a little bit of growth from their other story writing in the lessons before. They’re going to talk about opening the story and closing the story and kind of making those mirror each other a little bit. So it’s a new skill still based on the model text. So they have different beginnings and different endings for that model text. They’re going to talk about some of the features of these different beginnings and endings and how they match. And that’s their skill builder. So when your child does go to write or you can look back at the model you just wrote and see if that’s happening. So that might be a good place to go back in and say, how can we mirror this or how can we make this more exciting before your student starts writing their own? Another way to just grow the skills just a little bit and have this new idea coming out. So they’ve written stories before, but they haven’t concentrated maybe on the beginning and the end.

Kim Wampole: 00:29:57.244
Hopefully, everyone knows brainstorming. But sometimes brainstorming is really glossed over. So if you have a student who especially is saying they don’t have ideas or they just can’t put it all together or maybe they have all the ideas verbally, but they’re not writing them or they’re not organizing them. And then they become overwhelmed when you ask them to take all these thoughts and put them on this piece of paper, this restrictive piece of paper. Brainstorming is hugely important and it should take up– it should be a good chunk of the writing process as in it’s take your time with it, help out, and make sure the brainstorming is full. Like you’ve picked every idea out of their brain. You’ve gotten it on paper. Maybe you’ve gotten all of the ideas on your paper, and then they pick and choose their favorites to include on theirs, their final brainstorm, or the one that they’re actually going to use to write. So we want to get all of the ideas, good, bad, off the wall, whatever’s happening over here, out of their heads. That’s where you’re going to take the notes. Then have them pick a few out that they’re actually going to include. Maybe they have like 25 clues for their mystery. Well, there’s only room for three. Can we combine some of those ideas? Can we pick out the most important? We’re not going to write for hours. We’re going to write for a half hour. So you need to narrow it down a little bit. But here in the junior books, there’s nice planning sheets. The primary books have planning sheets. The team books rely on planning and brainstorming beforehand to organize the writing. A lot of comments of users of Write Shop come back and they go, “I never knew that taking the time to actually do this brainstorming really well would make writing so easy for my child.” So they have a plan. They don’t need to form ideas when they go to write now. It’s all laid out. Everything’s right here on this sheet. They’re just putting it into sentence form when it comes to writing on the paper.

Gretchen Roe: 00:32:15.844
I think one of the things that you have said here, Kim, that’s really important to emphasize is– I hear this from parents often, who say, “My daughter writes voluminously. I tell her I want a five-sentence paragraph, and I get 50 sentences.” So how do you rein the child in? And I think you’ve given parents an answer here, that brainstorming allows a student to take all of that stuff they want to say and brain-dump it and then choose how to make it the best to fit the assignment.

Kim Wampole: 00:32:52.030
Yes. And that is a huge one. That could also be a reason for reluctance, is that they have so many thoughts, they have so many ideas, that they’re just overwhelmed by just how big this writing project is going to be. “I’m going to write a five-page mystery.” “No, you are going to write one page.” So, yes. So anything you can do to narrow it down. I think WriteShop Book E, if I am not mistaken, has activities around actually narrowing it down. Some of the games are narrowing your big ideas down. But the sheets will also help them with that, especially if they can just verbalize all of the ideas and pick from the best of those ideas. So, when you do go to write, you’re going to whip out that mystery of the missing phone model text again and just have it there open to that page so that they can go back to that model and refresh their ideas and refresh the structure and the elements that they’re looking for. They can see a dialogue. So that if they include a dialogue in a back-and-forth, they can just use that as their model. They don’t have to process how to do a dialogue. They’re just using that model and writing their dialogue. Another question we had a lot was about grading, “How do I grade?” This doesn’t exactly go into it, but I did want to go over editing and revising because pretty much your child’s going to get ready to be graded by editing and revising. So you want to go away from the writing for a little while. WriteShop, on the schedule, has it as at least a day. Your child needs to step away. You can’t go right from brainstorming and then do a rough draft and then start editing it.

Kim Wampole: 00:34:51.764
They’re way too attached, way too involved. Sometimes, with some students in my classroom especially, I would get them all the way to the writing, the rough draft, and we would save all our rough drafts. And then we would have a designated time to go back into them and edit. So they were waiting a week or maybe even two weeks before they went back in and edited. The thing that it did was it created distance, and it created a new way to look at their writing. They weren’t so involved and intense about it. They weren’t in love with their ideas. They could look at it a little more clear-eyed. So take a break, whether it’s a day, whether it needs to be longer. It’s not going to harm anyone to walk away for a little bit and come back and edit things, or you can have an editing day for two projects, maybe. And so you have an editing day, or you’re editing a little bit behind. So you’re moving forward with the lessons, but you’re editing the previous lesson’s writing on that next day. It depends on your student. If they’re super, super, super attached to their piece, it’s going to be really hard to edit. It’s a human reaction. It’s not a kid reaction. I’m working right now with adult writers. I edit or I send them each other’s papers to edit and revise because sending it right back to the person after they send it in doesn’t work on adults either. So you need to be able to create this distance for a lot of students. Another trick is to make a copy of it. So they’re editing this photocopy instead of editing their good hard work, especially if they were the ones writing it. They can kind of edit this extra copy or advise this extra copy. So in Write Shop, one of the things that I really liked was that they started by just finding some good stuff. Go in and find some really good stuff. So you start off with a job well-done search and they have these elements that they’re searching for. So they’ve already talked about concrete adjectives and using these really great describing words. So on their job well-done search, they go back in and they find somewhere where they really describe things below. And they highlight it. And it’s like, awesome job. Like you celebrate the best parts of this piece of writing. That’s an awesome way to start. For a really reluctant writer or someone who just doesn’t want to touch their work, you could start there and then just kind of stop and take a break. So let the good be good and be celebrated. Maybe give them a little bit of break and say, let’s look and see if we can find a place for improvement.

Kim Wampole: 00:37:55.863
So the first thing you do is you look for those elements and those skills that you were working on the whole lesson. So we’re going to go back in and make sure our mystery has a detective, has clues, builds some mystery, has the suspects. Does their story have these things? This is all verbal too. You’re talking through this. You’re having your child point these things out to you and talk about their writing. So they’re looking for these things. They might be revising to put them in there or to make them clearer, but they’re having a talk about it. It’s not so overwhelming. It’s not a checklist where they just have to go in. These are the skills we’re concentrating on. This is what we’re going to edit for. So if you take that and apply it to your grading, you’re also grading on these elements. Your child’s job was to write a mystery using these story features. That’s where your grade is coming from. So if you wanted to work on spelling, then you would be grading for spelling. You don’t have to grade for all of it. It doesn’t have to be a perfect paper. It needs to have the elements that are the biggest focus. So one of the things I always thought was really hard as a teacher was I have the main goal. I know the main goal. I plan the lesson. And then I’ll get caught up in these other parts. And I have to keep going, wait, is that the most important thing? Is that what I need to concentrate on right now? Was that the purpose of this project? So if my student is getting hung up or is struggling with this one area, unless it’s that primary focus, I’m going to let it go because I’m going to hit it. The child’s not going to leave and go off to college and not understand understand that spelling is important and needs to be checked for. I’ll hit it later. What I don’t want to do is create those super negative feelings that I then have to overcome again. So again, unless it’s that primary purpose, can it fly? Yes, for now. Maybe not later, but can it slide on this project? Yes. Will they check for spelling and punctuation later? Sure. Maybe they’re only checking for spelling and punctuation in their quotations because doing the whole story is overwhelming. So okay, well, just check your dialogue. Is your dialogue done correctly? Good enough. They understand where the comma goes.

Kim Wampole: 00:40:48.153
They understand end marks. They put some capitalization in there. They’ll grow into it. They’ll have another shot. We just don’t want to overwhelm editing and revising. I think most of us know that it is the most overwhelming step, and it is really hard to admit your mistakes. So keeping it very simple and short would be great. [Right Top?] also provides some editing games and ways to score points and seeing who can find the most missing periods. They do activities like finding every single punctuation mark, because in our process of looking for all of them, we’ll notice the ones that are missing. So do these more interactive and fun ways of editing and revising that are a little more concrete and a little more positive.

Gretchen Roe: 00:41:41.869
One of the things that several parents brought up is their fear and concern that their children have dyslexia. And so dyslexia is a processing challenge. I have two children who are dyslexic, so I understand what it is like to experience that. But I think the important thing is to recognize that idea generation is not negated by having a challenge like dyslexia. As a matter of fact, some of the most beloved authors in American history have been dyslexics. And I shouldn’t limit it to just American history because Agatha Christie was a British author and is considered a dyslexic. F. Scott Fitzgerald, W.B. Yeats, John Irving, even Dave Pilkey, the guy who writes the Captain Underpants books, says that he’s dyslexic. So I want parents to understand, don’t think that dyslexia is an insurmountable hurdle to creating an opportunity for your child to be a successful writer because it’s not. It’s just up to you to be perhaps more of a detective than the average homeschool parent to figure out how to unlock your child’s creativity. Kim, what other questions can we answer here for parents today? I know that there was a parent who said that gaining confidence on how to get started in writing is the most intimidating thing. So if you were speaking with that reluctant parent, what would be the advice you would offer to them?

Kim Wampole: 00:43:29.083
I would say start with something that you like and try to think through why you enjoy that type of writing or that certain project and take some time and just look at the different elements in some of the stories and try to think through why you like that. And if you were asked to write that yourself, what would you be looking for? Would you be looking for a good start? Would you be looking for these different some elements, and seeing if you can find something a way in for yourself on one of these writing projects to kind of clarify and see maybe a path for your student. If that doesn’t work, I would say try to find a curriculum that is a gentle startup. So that walks you through that you can kind of open and go and just get some lessons under your belt. So I know a lot of curriculums offer some free first units and seeing if it fits your style. Looking at those sample scripts and seeing if you can imagine yourself or practicing them out loud and seeing if you can find that kind of natural entrance into having these dialogues around writing. One of the other things that I always find amazing that I wish I could emulate is sometimes when I go to the bookstore and I’m asking for a book recommendation, and I find that one employee who it’s their favorite genre. And they go through all of these books and why one is better than the other and what they like about one. All of that conversation around books and reading and characters is a really great thing to listen to and hear because then you can start to see these little, again, little paths into writing. And if you can find them for yourself, hopefully, that will encourage you to look for those paths for your child or to help them find those paths in and it’s okay to be encouraged by them.

Gretchen Roe: 00:45:40.355
We’re about 45 minutes in. So let me remind parents that if Kim or I have said something today that leads you to have a question, please remember, you can post questions in the Q&A. You can post questions in the chat. We do want to make sure that since we’re doing this today, we are meeting our familys’ obligation as far as answering the questions that you all have in the back of your mind. I think one of the important things, Kim, is for us to be able to emphasize there’s a difference between putting a pencil on paper and writing. And so what we’re talking here is staying in the creative end of the proposition in as much as possible and not letting the physical limitations of perhaps letter formation or stamina be a deterrent from that creativity. I have found being a creative writing instructor for a number of years that my phone is my most valuable tool. I’m not a particularly patient person. And even though I type very quickly, I have found it to be tremendously beneficial to open an email on my phone, hand the email to my student, hit the microphone button, and say, “Tell me a story.” So using the framework that Kim has given, that gives you another way to keep your student from being reluctant to put that pencil on the paper because you’re staying in the creative end of the proposition. And I think that makes a tremendous difference for parents.

Kim Wampole: 00:47:26.651
That can help too with that brainstorming idea that you’re describing every idea. It’s really hard to keep up with, especially if you have more than one child doing the project and brainstorming together, and you want it to be natural and you want it to flow. And if you’re saying, “Wait, let me get that down”, that interrupts that idea flow. So using that assistive technology in those ways can really help too. It takes the burden off of you a little bit, and you can just have– you can concentrate just on guiding that conversation.

Gretchen Roe: 00:47:58.607
Absolutely. I think that makes a tremendous amount of difference. And being able to keep a child in the creative end of the experience can do a lot to surmount the kids who really feel like they’re struggling. One of the things I think that is important for us to emphasize is there’s a difference between encouraging feedback as parents and punitive feedback as parents. So I think Kim did a terrific job of explaining. Decide what you want to evaluate for, but bear in mind that creative writing is the most difficult thing we ask a student to do. And so maybe that’s not the hill you want to die on for spelling as well. Maybe it is easier to reward your students for the things that they have done correctly. Like, “Oh, I’m so impressed that you started each sentence with a capital. I’m so impressed that you concluded each sentence with some sort of punctuation.” Makes it much better than being the goddess of the red pen.

Kim Wampole: 00:49:07.507
And also then that goes back to communication, right? Because you use these end marks, now I can follow your story. I get your ideas. I can follow the story. You have communicated your story clearly. So if we try to put a spin on it, a lot of times that will help out. I also like to think of especially creative writing that it’s an art. You can consider it art. You are choosing these words. Especially when you’re describing, you are choosing the words that you want to help your reader get the same picture as you. So I don’t really want people to critique my artwork. So that’s where that sticking point comes in. So if you think of your student’s creative piece as a piece of artwork, then it becomes really hard to grade. Use that as a warning sign. That’s why we’re looking for the job-well-dones. That’s why we’re focusing just on the story elements that are really important or just on this one aspect of mechanics is because we are touching their creation. We’re asking them to change their creation. And that can help you step back from all those editing ideas and all the overburdening the child with edits, is that you just need the communication to be clear. That’s how much you need to edit.

Gretchen Roe: 00:50:35.692
I think that’s really terrific advice. And I think one of the other things that we as parents fail to take into consideration is looking in a writing process over the long term to see the growth. So I always encourage parents to hold on to every writing composition your student has. And maybe you live in a small environment where it doesn’t behoove you to hold pounds of paper, you can certainly take a picture of those writing assignments and put them in a folder for your student because I know in my family with my six writers, some of the fiercely funny moments were going back and looking at some compositions that started in the beginning of the year and the encouragement that is wrought by being able to see how far you’ve come. So I think that’s a good thing to encourage parents to continue to do. Kim, we have about five minutes left. In closing, what do you think would be the important things for us to share with parents so that they could take away from this good information?

Kim Wampole: 00:51:45.064
I think when you’re struggling to just really get curious about where those struggles really are, and then working hard to find that way in, it’s just really important. It can be a really small win, really small. But once you get there, then you can grow from there. So I think thinking of it altogether or as writing can be overwhelming for both the instructor and the student. Can you find the small path in? Can you find something that you really love and that you find that you can teach or that you feel comfortable teaching? For instance, a friendly letter is a really good path in if you’re struggling with teaching or finding a way in and a student is struggling with the writing process. One, the purpose is very clear. You’re going to mail it, hopefully to someone that will write back, and you’re going to get a response, whether it’s a phone call or another written letter. But creating that purpose is there. It’s something that’s very structured, right? You have the date, you have the greeting, you have the commas where they need to be. You can teach about addresses and more commas. Get them ready for that dialogue in your mystery. But it’s a good path forward or finding these little projects to create these paths forward or find your way into writing.

Gretchen Roe: 00:53:10.412
This is Gretchen Roe for The Deme Learning Show. Thanks for joining us. You can access the show notes and watch a recording at demmelearning.com/show or go on our YouTube channel. Be sure to rate, review, follow, or subscribe wherever you may be hearing this, especially if you really enjoyed it.

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