Literacy 

Eventbrite Opportunity Saturday Session with Tristan Bancks

This Saturday, August 15th, Tristan Bancks will be holding a Zoom session to discuss his book ‘Nit Boy’. This is a free event that might inspire young readers and writers:

Cultivating Ideas for Writing 

Most of the writing that students do at school is directed and structured. There is usually some choice in topic or style but in many instances, students are not just freely choosing what to write and how they will write. There is, however, evidence that students who are able to enjoy writing and produce writing on their own are likely to improve in their writing and want to continue to grow as a writer as they get older.

One of the most common roadblocks when it comes to students writing of their own free will is that they ‘don’t know what to write about’. In essence, they are stuck for topics. A tool that can help students overcome this is a writer’s notebook. In a writer’s notebook, writers collect ideas for texts. They may never see the light of day but they are recorded so that if that writer gets stuck they can look back over their ideas to gain inspiration.

Examples of the types of ideas you might include are:

• Photos from a holiday -  This might prompt you to write a fact file about the place you have visited or a procedural text about how to prepare for a holiday or a poem about being on holiday
• Movie titles/pictures of movies you have watched - This might prompt you to write a movie review or a sequel to the movie
• A sketch of something that has happened in your life - This might prompt you to write a descriptive piece or a narrative piece
• A drawing of a person you know/have met - This might inspire you to use them as a character in a piece you create
• Cutouts of magazine or newspaper headings/images - These might inspire you to create a non-fiction piece or a poem or a narrative
• A list of things that you love/hate - These can be used in all sorts of ways. You would take any of these and make a sense poem, write an information report about one of these things or a description

If you have a spare notebook at home, this would be a good time for your child to start putting down some ideas for future writing. It could even be that they look out the window and write down all the things they see. 

I would also say that any writing is better than no writing - comics are something lots of kids love making and while they are not sometimes seen as ‘proper writing’ they are excellent for helping students sequence events, be creative with their ideas and play with the relationship between illustrations and text. Lists are another form of writing.

For some ideas on helping students with ideas for their own writing can be found in the videos below:

Where do you find ideas?