Living Life Twice

 It is important to keep in mind that line breaks in poetry are important to free verse poetry poems as they are to end rhyme in couplets and staanzas. when writing poetry the aim should be to keep the words that belong together on the same line so they don't feel displaced.  In the poem, the poet may wish to emphasize a word or phrase so they may create a line to place the selected text all by itself in order to highlight it for the reader. By doing this the poet can create suspense or surprise within the poem. They are inviting the reader to notice that word, that phrase.  Main Types of Line Breaks • Lines that end with a clear grammatical pause or punctuation mark, which slows the rhythm and offers closure are referred to as e nd stopped line breaks. •  Lines that run an incomplete thought or sentence over to the next line without punctuation   are called, enjambment. Such line breaks  create forward momentum for the poem.  Why Poets Use Line...

  Young writers are inexperienced at writing memoir, but there are some significant actions teachers can take to significantly support and enhance the writing they produce… Memoir is detection, the sifting through a million lived moments in order to identify the most memorable ones.  The memoir writer rebuilds a part of their life, piece by piece to share with a reader.  The spark for the memoir might come from the colour of a favourite pencil, the secrets held safely by an old teddy. A first pet.  It might involve adventures in your neighbourhood, the sounds, shapes and smells of your first house, that special tree, your first disappointment, an incident, an accident. A place that holds a story. Just as home is the place we know best, our families are at the centre of the stories we often hold dear. Some of the experiences the writer is having right now may remain with them forever as memories. The challenge for the writer is to capture them in their writing…  ...

Volition is the need, desire, urge or the internal compulsion to write.’ Ross Young and Felicity Ferguson Writing For Pleasure The growth of volition is fed by a growing knowledge about writing, informing the writer that what they are doing is both pleasurable and desirable. Volition can also be achieved through writing something so strongly and clearly that it energizes the writer and they persist in the hope of replicating the original sense of accomplishment.   As teachers we are charged with responsibility to assist young writers to learn how to write. Equally we must work to instil within them a desire to want to write. We must assist them to develop a mindset that the benefits that flow from writing outweigh the time and effort they invest in producing those words.   As teachers we must convince young writers of the intellectual, social and personal rewards that can be derived from writing. The pay off must be enticing to the writer. If we are to be effec...

  Writing has a dimension that extends well beyond the page and the pen.      While the words spill across the page, the ideas driving them frequently arise well away from where the writing eventually takes place.      As author, Jane Yolen notes in her book, Take Joy, ‘Writing is not always done on the page.’      Experienced writers devote a significant amount of time to the preparation for writing. They may at various times, read, research, discuss, draw, plan, think, brainstorm, either individually, or in concert.       From these pre-writing activities they may simultaneously launch into rehearsal of words and ideas in locations well away from their favoured writing location.      Rehearsal is an impressively portable concept. It can be conducted anywhere, anytime- in the car, in the shower, in a café, at the beach, the airport, or just before you drift off to sleep. It can be activated whi...

The writer sits down to face the blank page, only to be greeted by the dazzling whiteness of the paper. The pen is tightly gripped as the writer stares at the empty page. There is hope that time will deliver the wondrous words desperately sought. The empty lines beckon inviting the young writer’s words. The challenge remains- How to begin? If you have experienced this feeling, you will have greater empathy for your students and those feelings that sometimes overwhelm them as beginning writers. They often have a broad idea regarding their writing, but have little idea where, or how, to begin. They want to produce something that effectively conveys a message but remain unsure of how to begin the process. 'I know what I want to write about, but I don't know how to start.' We need to recognize that it is at this point we can provide meaningful support to allay such writing anxieties. Teaching students how to think of something to write, provides a way forward. This p...

  Some of my earliest memories of writing are entwined around the weekly writing topics I was given in primary school. We wrote every Thursday afternoon, immediately after the lunch break. It wasn't even called writing. Our teacher referred to it as 'composition time.' We wrote for about twenty minutes in absolute silence in our 'composition' books.  At the end of the allotted time, we handed in our written responses, then waited an entire week to receive feedback for our labored efforts. It consisted of a mark out of ten and a page of red ink comments and slashes across the page. Then we sat and waited for the next teacher topic to be thrown our way. We wrote one day a week for twenty minutes. It wasn't much of a writing program by today's standards. It wasn't much of a way to learn writing back then either. I'm surprised we learned to write at all on such a starvation diet. I was just lucky enough to be the kind of kid who was driven to write in pl...

 Wonderful, wonderful Words... Writers collect words. It is almost compulsive. I have always had a fascination for words.  If we can get the right word in the right place, you can give the reader a nudge and make then pay extra attention. For this reason alone words deserve our respect. I recently saw the word – skedaddle in a story. It’s a word I recall from my childhood, but I had neither seen or heard it for yonks (an indeterminate yet substantial period of time). I love the sound of skedaddle. I have been sharing it with young writers recently in the hope I can singlehandedly revive its use in common conversation. I vividly recall reading Colin Theile’s wonderful short story ‘ The Lock Out’ to a Grade 6 class I taught quite some years back and coming across the words ‘agog’ and ’gingerly.’ I wrote them on the board, and we discussed them and savoured the sounds they made. I encouraged the students to try and use them in their writing. In time these special words alon...

  By the time students reach Grade three they have been exposed to, continually reminded and alerted to the importance of using ending punctuation at the conclusion of sentences. However, if we look at the writing samples they produce early in the school year, we notice how intermittently such marks appear in their work. Punctuation often appears by chance rather than conscious effort. If we want developing writers to exhibit consistency in the use of punctuation, we need to teach them to value its use in their writing. The best case scenario is to have young writers using punctuation with thoughtful intent. How do we achieve this? Let’s start by initiating a close study of how such ending punctuation can be used to make writing more interesting for the reader.  The message needs to be- This punctuation helps to convey the writer’s voice!  Remind them to link their reading of their writing to an emotion - anger, happiness, frustration etc. The me...