Of Writing Process

I began Monday’s writing lesson with a brainstorming session, asking the kids to recall last week’s STARBASE experience, what they enjoyed the most, what they learned from it all. For many, the rocket building and launching was by far the highlight of the week, but it was quite interesting to see what else they considered most memorable.

As we created a group sized circle map on the board, many favorite sessions were called out: “Eggbert!” called one girl, and the class responded by laughing, each recalling their own experience securing an egg (not hardboiled) with materials provided by the instructor, then watching the space vehicle, carrying their precious padded and taped egg, crash into a rock. There were only a few survivors.

“Launching the rockets!” called out another student. “Do you mean building and launching the rockets or just launching them?” I asked. Several quickly added “Building and launching!”

“What else did you learn about, that you didn’t know much about before STARBASE came?” I asked.

“When he talked about gravity and lift and thrust,” suggested one boy.

“Forces of Flight,” I wrote on the board. “What else?”

“The Sooper Puppy video,” one girl said as she pointed to the picture in her flight log. “The video about drug abuse,” she added.

“Yeah, and those goggles were funny,” another called out.

Their regular teacher asked, “What was so funny about the goggles?”

“They made us feel weird,” a student answered.

“What was the purpose of wearing the goggles,” I asked.

“To learn what it was like to be on drugs,” someone answered.

“How did it make you feel?” their teacher asked.

“It was hard to walk a straight line with them on. Maybe that’s how it feels to be drunk,” one girl suggested.

Another student said, “It made me feel sick.”

“That was the Fatal Vision session,” I said as I wrote it in our brainstorm circle. Then the memories came back quickly and the kids were calling out several at once. Soon, I had Ocean of Air, and Exploring Aeronautics, and Things that Fly written on the board.

Finally, one student said, “The test clickers… I really liked the test clickers.”

The class broke into unanimous agreement. The test clickers, a remote control unit with a series of buttons, enabled students to respond to test questions projected on a screen by aiming and pressing a choice (A,B,C, or D) during the pre- and post-tests. They liked it much better than the pencil and paper multiple choice tests they are accustomed and even better than the computer benchmark tests, which are also multiple choice. The remote unit selectors are probably the closest thing to playing with a video game or making selections when watching television. The teachers liked the concept even more than the students, however, considering it’s value for replacing the time needed for grading papers, and providing immediate feedback of whole class and individual comprehension. My first thought when I saw them in use was “We’ve got to get these in the classroom! ”

“Test clickers,” I added to the cluster taking shape on the board. Soon, the circle was filled with things they enjoyed and learned from their STARBASE experience.

I asked them to consider the things we talked about, and told them to choose three of the events or experiences that they enjoyed the most. They would be writing a letter to the STARBASE people, a thank you letter, but it would be written in the five paragraph expository format they had recently learned to organize.

Their regular teacher and I then reviewed the components of the five paragraph letter: an opening, three middle paragraphs, and a closing. We reminded them that they would be writing one paragraph for each event they enjoyed, and that paragraph would have to relate examples, explanation, and/or narrative, in other words, details to support the main idea.

To help them get started, I showed an overhead of my thank you letter, and read it out loud, pausing here and there to ask a question about why I might have chosen a particular word, or to ask them about the purpose of the last sentence in the paragraph. Then, as a group, we reverse mapped the whole letter onto a pillar map drawn on chart paper. The kids did their part to find the main idea of each paragraph, and then we looked for the details to support the main idea, filling in the spaces provided on the map. Soon, the entire letter was reduced to words and phrases, main ideas and supporting details, all neatly diagrammed into little organizational rectangles.

Their next step will be to make their own pillar maps using what they had selected to write about, and then they will be ready to tackle the letter. Such a long process, but teaching writing to someone who doesn’t know how, or who doesn’t want to, is no easy task. Having something exciting to write about usually helps, and they have something exciting to write about. With daily modeling of the component parts, and group discussions along the way, the students will get their letters written, and the memory of the week with STARBASE will be forever remembered on paper.