As a blogger, I'm still trying to shake loose. I was ace in school at churning out writing assignments that met all the criteria in a dry, uber-grammar-conscious state of "academic" precision.
When this kind of mode is used for teaching writing to young children not yet in touch with their writing voices, kids train themselves to think of how to solve the “puzzle” of the assignment (meeting the expectations of the rubric), rather than tapping into their writing voice and really determining what it is they want to say, and how they want to say it.Ĭan anyone resonate with that? I can. They deconstruct a kind of writing (like an essay), create an assignment that will reproduce the structure of the model or the form (five paragraphs, has these components, takes up this much paper), and then expect the student to produce writing that matches that set of expectations without necessarily taking into account what the student wants to express. The core difference between Brave Writer and other programs is that we teach writing much the way professional writers teach writing. We give parents instruction in how to nurture and draw out the writing voices of their children without causing damage (making writing a chore or treating it like a subject to be drummed out for school or causing resentment, tears and writer’s block). I'm drawn to Brave Writer for Julia's focus on nurturing the writer, beginning with an emphases on individual voice, and teaching within the context of interesting kids' books, instead of through dry sentences or exercises conjured in abstraction for the sake of a textbook.īrave Writer focuses on establishing writing voice and the writing process in children and teens first, by helping parents know how to foster the right environment for writing risks. She's an online writing coach who eventually developed digital language arts curriculum by popular demand. Apparently writing can be useful (hello, blogging!), so I absolutely want writing in our homeschool to be about authentic communication, to be so much more than essay outlining, to have a liveliness not found in diagramming sentences.īrave Writer is the brain child of Julia Bogart, a real-life professional writer and mother of 5, homeschooler of 17 years.
Ok, to get myself in the mood, I'm going to share with you today about a cool new resource we're using this year.įirst of all, inspiring name, right? I want to be a brave writer. This morning I conceded that we would start bits of school next week and kind of work up to the full thing. I've been callously deflecting hints-then-requests-then-pleads to start school with good old-fashioned logic, but that's definitely wearing thin. Can someone turn on the School Switch in my brain please? We're supposed to have 3 weeks left of summer vacation before our new school year starts, but I don't think my kids are going to last that long.
0 kommentar(er)
