So…if you’re reading this, you probably know that I’m obsessed with making things simpler. One of the things I’ve fought for a long time is writing about how to make teaching writing simpler.
Why?
Because I feel like a teaching-writing loser. I just don’t know how to do it well and I KNOW for sure I didn’t teach it well when I did teach it to kids every day.
But, I can’t ignore the topic any longer because, “How do I teach my kids to write well?” is one of the top 3 questions I get everywhere I go. Well, actually, what I hear on 100% of my school visits is, “My kids can’t write!” – and it’s usually said with massive amounts of frustration and tearing my hair out-ness!
So, I decided to bite the bullet and write about teaching students to write. Yep – the loser writer is now teaching you how to teaching your kids to write. Talk about a problem.
But…what I’ve realized along the way of writing this book (I’m about 2 weeks in at this point) is that coming from the perspective of a loser writer is EXACTLY what teachers and kids need! We don’t need a slick program or expert telling us how to write when they’ve got it perfectly down. In fact, writing doesn’t work like that. It’s messy, uncharted sometimes, full of stop and starts.
And well, what’s better than a writing loser who can relate to all of it to teach you!
So, here’s one of my first forays into help teachers teach kids the process of writing. No – I’m not talking about fancy charts/graphs and how-tos, I’m talking about the step-by-step approach to getting ideas on the paper in a way that increases the odds that the reader will know what the heck you’re talking about.
Not sure how much this will help you, but hopefully it’ll get you thinking in the right direction. Here’s a sneak peek of the notes I collected over the past few months. I think this is pretty close to the outline of 1/2 of the book. More to to come – stay tuned!
