Teaching students to be concise writers.

Let’s Eat!
Everyone loves to eat, talk about eating, and even to buy food! Here is a fun variation of my "less is more" activity.  We all have to go shopping, so ask the students to save a copy of a receipt from a store with at least ten items on it. Usually, within a week, everyone will have a receipt to work with.For the lesson, ask each student to pick two or three items and go into great detail when explaining what it is. The shopping list is the specific, to-the-point example and the student’s version would again be the non-example.
This activity reminds me of a commercial I saw several times about a man and his wife ordering dinner in a restaurant from a waiter. The man communicates his entire order to the waiter in about three seconds, but when the attention shifts to the woman, we realize that this is going to take awhile! From the very first question, “How would you like your meat?” she responds with, “Well, when you say medium, what do you really mean? Sometimes I ask for medium rare and the cow's practically still mooing, and in other restaurants the meat is burnt to a crisp when I ask for medium!” She then proceeds in the same manner with her responses to every other thing that she orders. So we have the non-example!
This activity can also easily be done with a Christmas wish list written by the students. Just have them write both versions so they can get used to telling the difference between fully explaining something and just writing a brief explanation and moving on.

Teaching students to ELABORATE their ideas in creative writing.

Elabor8!

One way to work on developing ideas at the beginning of the year is for the students to actually count sentences as they develop an idea. This can work with specific writing concepts such as developing a setting or the feelings and emotions that a character is going through. Many teachers cringe upon seeing the word elaborate and would rather refer to it as developing an idea, but if you'll indulge me, this term is used simply for the "8" in the title. Whether working in groups or on their own, the students are given a topic to write on and cannot stop or switch to another topic until they have completed eight sentences that flow well and relate directly to the topic. Let me show you an example with the emotion nervous.

I was so scared I thought I might pee my pants! My legs trembled as I stood like a statue, not knowing what to do. Sweat began to drip from my forehead and back, and my arms were starting to shake from the anticipation of what might be waiting for me on the other side of the door. My legs were heavy lead weights as I forced them forward one baby step at a time. "Oh God, please help me!” I whispered quietly, over and over. My heart was now beginning to race, and I felt that at any moment it was going to explode. Turning the handle slowly, I pulled the door open and as I nervously peeked into the strange room, my eyes bulged out of their sockets at what I saw.

Developing ideas in this way not only creates a more complete story, but engages the reader more fully because he is actually able to see the writer behind the writing. Compare this to a writer who merely states, "I was really scared!" BIG DIFFERENCE! The trick here again is knowing when it is important to "elabor8", and when it might be more appropriate to say it in a word and move on to the next idea.
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Fun Interactive Story Development Student Exercise!

Stuck on You!  A story development game for your students.

This activity is a very strong hands-on visual that allows the students to see and hear whether their ideas are developed or not. You will need to purchase a set of paddle sticks with the suction cups on one side and the rubber ball that comes with it. Give the paddles to two students to hold, standing about ten feet apart. Have another student read an essay, and as long as the author is talking about the same idea, keep the ball stuck to one paddle. As soon as he switches to a new idea, have the student holding the ball pass it to the person with the other paddle. The ball will again stay there until the author switches to another idea. When a student writer needs more practice with development, you will notice that the balls will be moving back and forth very quickly. As they are taught to develop more fully, they will only have a few passes back and forth for the entire paper. Yes, the students will have a blast, but they will really learn how to develop each idea more completely before jumping to the next one.

Helping elementary writers add SENSES to their stories.

In many stories, especially those written by children, you may as well leave your five senses at home, as you won’t be needing them while reading.  I have a suggestion for you teachers, and this is probably one of the most effective visual aids to try when your kids are not using enough of the five senses to tell their story.
At any store that carries the Mr. Potato Head game (Reg. U.S. Pat. and Tm. Off.), purchase the type that has two or more characters so that you can involve more than one story character in the activity. As each story is being read, begin with the game pieces out, but nothing attached yet. When the author allows the reader to visualize something, plug in the eyes. If the reader gets to hear what a character is hearing, go ahead and plug in one of the ears. If the story shifted its setting, you could put in his feet, and so on. Many of the Potato Heads have accessories, so you can utilize them also when certain things are mentioned in the story. For example, if a reference is made to weather, you might put on his sunglasses. When the characters express feelings or emotions, you could place a heart sticker where his heart would be.
There are two extremes to be aware of when using this activity. The first one is that at the beginning of the year, many students will go through an entire paper without using any of their senses whatsoever! You would only put feet on the Potato Head, because all the author did was go places and do things. The other extreme is the student who wants his Mr. Potato Head to be completely filled with body parts by the time the story is finished. In his quest to do this, many of the details that are mentioned seem forced into the story, instead of sounding like they developed naturally. In a situation such as this, I would not give credit for use of the senses. After a while, with plenty of practice on their part and much patience on yours, you will begin to hear nicely balanced papers, full of exciting ideas that include most of the five senses.

Helping students write focused stories.

Zoomin’ In

Many students are very similar to a disposable camera when they write compositions. Everything in the story has an equal value. They don’t have the ability to blur out the minor information that has no real importance to the story's plot. They will spend as much time writing about eating breakfast and getting ready in the morning as they do actually developing the main event of their story. Try this: Ask the students to begin by telling about their summer vacation. This would be too broad for a two-page paper, so you must help them decide which was the most interesting activity of the summer and "zoom in" on that.

Develop the event fully and it will usually be something that took place over a period of a week or less. Then from that week, try to find an event that really stands out which took place over a period of just one day and zoom in to develop that. Finally, from that one day, decide which activity is the most unique and original, and make that the focal point of the story. This event might be something that took only a few minutes or hours, depending on the ability of the student to develop a focused idea. Zooming in like this will really help to create a more focused story, eliminating a lot of the unnecessary information that students usually want to include. A good test of the relevance of an idea is to take an imaginary picture of each idea the writer includes in the story. You will often find that because of extraneous information there are many more pictures than are actually needed to show the story.

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Adding some WEATHER to creative writing.

Weather or Not?
One creative way to sprinkle a little weather into a story is to show it by what the character does, wears, or even says.
Try the following exercise on your students.

In the following sentences, try to figure out what the weather is like based solely on what is written, with no mention of weather at all.
1. My swimsuit looked great as I admired myself in the mirror.
2. I quickly grabbed my umbrella and coat and raced out the front door.
3. The window was so foggy, I had to rub it with my hand to see outside.
4. “Why don’t we go to the beach....it’s so nice out!” I exclaimed.
5. The sweat began to drip down my face and my shirt was soaked.
6. My legs were trembling and my teeth chattered loudly.
7. The trees were dancing slowly with one another like couples in love.
8. “Hey, look at my miniature snowman!” I shouted happily.

Composition topics & writing guidelines for elementary students.

Look What I Found!
I watch a lot of movies, especially ones made for kids, since my four children are between the ages of 1 and 11. I saw that in a large percentage of the movies, the plot was centered around something special that the main character found, and how that object changed the lives of everyone involved. Here are a few examples:
In the movie The Lord of the Rings, the main character finds a ring (and spends three movies trying to get rid of it!) Aladdin finds a bottle, a genie, a magic carpet, and a girl......they always seem to find the girl! In Like Mike, the boy finds shoes that make him play basketball like a professional. Beauty and the Beast allows the main character to find love in a person she never expected could have provided it.
I could go on and on; there are hundreds and hundreds of movies that use the plot of discovery as their main thrust. The prompt below and the planning outline on the next page are based on this fact. Allow your students to respond to this prompt and watch them come up with some very interesting papers. Some will use the ideas from movies they have seen, which is fine as long as they make the story their own, and borrow from the ideas, not simply copy them.
"Write a composition about finding something special."
Try this prompt with your students and see how they do!
  
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New Creative Writing Ideas for elementary students.

Out With the Old?

Many students develop old ideas in their stories: the beach (which we discussed earlier) theme parks, the zoo, birthday parties, are all ideas that are worn out from being used so often. I got so tired of my students picking the same old ideas and doing the exact same things with those ideas that I designed a poster with many of the most worn-out story ideas.
I then told my students that the only way they could choose one of the ideas listed is to change it from a dinosaur, as I mentioned earlier, to at least a parrot idea, one that has been done, but is at least engaging and creative in its presentation.
Here are a few examples of how my students keep the old idea, but just "freshen it up" a little in the development. A birthday party would become interesting if the piñata suddenly came to life. A trip to the zoo would be exciting if perhaps one of the animals escaped or started to speak English. A ride on a roller coaster would be engaging when the ride is a means of getting to another time or place.
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Fun Way to Learn New Vocabulary What's in a Word?

Students love to find words they've never seen or heard of before. A fun way to put their curiosity to work is directing them to search for high level words in their textbooks, class sets, or any library books. Once they have found several, they will write the sentence containing the words in context, predict what the word means, then look it up in the thesaurus or dictionary. After they have learned what the words really mean, have them make up three other sentences using the words in a meaningless, nonsensical way. Now the competition begins! Ask your students to take turns reading a sentence to each other and guess which one uses the word correctly. The winner is the team of students which guesses the most correctly written sentences after everyone has had an opportunity to read. This activity will be beneficial in the following ways: Number one, it exposes your students to more vocabulary to include in their compositions; and secondly, it helps in the area of Reading with word meaning. Have a bodacious time!

Change sentence structure to add story variety.

Around the Word in Eighty Ways

Humans are creatures of habit. We get used to doing things a certain way, and it's often hard to change. The point I will make here is that students develop the habit of writing sentences in which the subject is followed by the predicate. Once they are made aware of this trend, which makes sentences sound "sing-songy", they can usually take care of the issue by making a few minor adjustments in the sentence structure. One strategy to try is asking them to write or find sentences with a variety of sentence structures, using the parts of speech in different orders. Look for sentences opening with the following parts of speech: verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, objects of the preposition, etc.
Here is an example of a sentence playing Around the Word in Eighty Ways. Example: Adjective beginning--Sour pickles are what I love to eat early in the morning. Pronoun beginning--I love to eat sour pickles early in the morning. Verb beginning--Eating sour pickles is what I love to do early in the morning. Model starting this sentence some other ways, then look for several other sentences to try the concept with. It's amazing how simply changing sentence structure can bring creativity and variety to a story!
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Teaching kids to give presentations.

One of the easiest and most interesting ways for kids to learn how to give presentations involving bar graphs, line graphs, and pictographs is using the topics that interest them the most. Assign surveys for them to do with friends, family members, and classmates about what their favorites are and make a tally as the answers are given. Then they can convert their responses to whatever type of graph is most appropriate for the situation.
Here are some examples of favorites that could be graphed by your students in elementary and middle school: favorite food, color, pet, teacher, t.v. show, video game, clothes, movie, actor, singer, song, grade, book, place to visit, hobby, sport, season, dessert, animal, car, toy, board game, card game, restaurant, store, etc.
There are many more that the students will think of which would be interesting to your particular class. The choice is not as important as the integration of visual aids into the mode that is used to present information, especially as they move into the upper elementary and middle school grades. Colorful graphs really add clarity and depth to both written and oral presentations. This helps the visual learner, whether he's the one presenting or the one receiving the information. Most kids take pride in making a great visual.