Crafting Writers Chapters 4 & 5

Students who are exposed to reading and like to read usually receive high appraisal on their work. Students who are not as strong in this area often just received comments on how their writing could be corrected/improved. Teachers can create a new mindset and atmosphere in the classroom by introducing craft.

Teachers can use craft by first naming the specific craft. Giving an example of where the student used this craft, and finally explaining why it was good. Students should be introduced to these crafts and see them modeled by a teacher or in literature. Using craft instruction can help students enhance the craft they are already using and help them elaborate.

Some of the different crafts include; the five senses, show not tell, dialogue, sentence variety, and word choice. Students may use these concepts, but it is not until the student teacher conference that children will elaborate. For example, the student may write about how the shoes were pretty. It is not until the conference with them that the teacher will find what they were recalling, and really thinking about the shoes. In reality they might like the green sparkle the shoes had. You can offer the suggestion that when the student is talking about clothing items they can add a couple sentences describing the item. This will help them in the future when they write about the same topic.

An important writing craft for students is sentence varitiy. In order to assist children with this, it is important to introduce lots of different types of writing.  One way to so this is introducing the idea of starting sentences with different words and using different sized sentences. To make sentences longer (without making them run-on), it is good to use the combination words, while, as, during, before, and after.

Punctuation is a part of writing that may not be empathized right away. Students will start to experiment with punctuation by putting certain symbols randomly within their writing. They may also need reminders to use punctuation, as they understand how to use it but forget to put it in their writing. It is important for the teacher to describe why punctuation is needed.

Students will start to see punctuation such as parentheses used in the books they read. Students should understand that they could use commas to add more detail to a sentence without making it confusing. For example, rather than using “things” in a sentence, you can describe what this things are using commas (shoes, hats, rings, scarf’s).

Teachers can support a student use of punctuation in a variety of ways.  They can set aside time for students to explore punctuation. One example of this is having students look for how authors have used punctuation in their writing and why they use these punctuation marks. Another way to encourage students to use punctuation during independent reading time is to set aside a few minutes at the end to set down their pencils and re-read what they have written adding in any missing marks.