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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