Ideas

=IDEAS=

It seems that whenever students are given a writing assignment, inevitably some of them freeze like deer in headlights as they try to think of what to write. And if the writing assignment is too narrow - what students write is often lifeless and uninspiring. Teaching students to view the world through the lens of a writer can help them to see the ideas that can be found in even the dullest of topics.

The trait of ideas is about the writer's overall message and meaning - it's the content.

In very young writers, ideas may be conveyed by:


 * drawing pictures with bold lines and lots of color
 * experimenting with letters and words
 * captioning pictures they create themselves and gather from sources
 * talking about what happened to them or their characters
 * asking questions and making lists about things that interest them
 * noticing significance in little things and events//(Culham, 2005)//

In working with developing writers and teaching them the traits, there are four key pieces that every student can learn:
 * Selecting an idea (topic)
 * Narrowing the idea (focus)
 * Elaborating on the idea (development)
 * Discovering the best information to convey the idea (details) //(Culham, 2003)//

Many powerful ideas for writing can come from students keeping "writer's notebooks." These notebooks might contain daily observations of the world around them, key quotes from mentor texts or overheard in the subway, elevator, or school hallways. They might be drawings or text - or a combination of both. [|Ralph Fletcher] writes about the use of writer's notebooks in this article.

[|Ideas Handout] (Madison, WI) Lesson Ideas