[Tea] Fill the "house" with a lively voice!

Hi Friend,

Here's the third part of our series on writing voice.

What about writing formats? Shouldn't these be taught?

How do you protect your child's writing voice when teaching formats for writing?

See it this way: If a writing format is the “house," then the writer’s voice is the life within.

When your children freewrite, imagine they are rough housing or playing in the family room—free to dump the Lego bricks all over the floor or to twirl and dance without a care. The freewrite is the joyous expression of unfettered possibility.

As we talked about in our last email, consider what kind of container would best house the freewriting. For instance, to take our analogy further—a child might be better served building a complicated Lego set on a table, instead of the carpet; or the child might enjoy twirling and dancing on the back lawn more than in the living room near expensive knickknacks.

Writing voice and revision

Revising writing means to see the intent of the writing—the lively voice—and then to imagine what form would best serve it.

Often, simply revising the freewrite for clarity, a sense of humor, organization, and powerful language is enough to take it to the next level. Your child will wind up with a paper that is a few paragraphs long that might:

retell,
describe,
narrate,
instruct,
remember,
or explore.

All good!

However, as your child develops ease and skill in writing, it’s great to introduce some of the more common formats for writing like

poetry,
letters,
and reports.

Remember: you stir up the writing voice first through freely writing, and then you massage it into the new shape of the format.

Some writing curricula focus on formats almost exclusively:

Write a portrait of your mother’s face.
Write a narrative paragraph about last year’s birthday.
Write an expository paragraph about Custer’s Last Stand.
Describe the autumn leaves in two paragraphs.

These kinds of writing tasks can be perfectly fine for kids who write naturally and comfortably. First ask them to get those words onto the page and then help your children reorganize those thoughts into a writing format.

If the assignment calls for an expository paragraph about Custer’s Last Stand, the goal is to write about the last stand in a way that exposes the reader to details about that moment in history. Freewriting will help a child tap into those details more naturally than asking for well-crafted sentences that follow emphatic order.

Do you need to consult those websites or writing books that explain what a topic sentence is, how many lines ought to fit into the paragraph, what a clincher is and so on?

The formats may serve as guides, but I would avoid programs and websites that treat formats like formulas or recipes.

A writing teacher I admire put it this way:

“As a student grows his writing voice, he will not always use the most accurate or sophisticated structure. Yet it is essential that he develop his voice first, without those restraints, so that he knows what it is to speak genuinely and with personal confidence. It is at this point that formats may be taught.”

Do formats restrain the writer’s voice?

When a format is taught, initially some of that spark may fade. The writer’s voice might become submerged in the restrictions and specifics of the format. That is because the student is putting her energy into mastering a new way of writing and gives less attention to what she has to say specifically.

The writer who has a sense of her own writing voice, however, will eventually move through the awkward, stiff writing phase and reincorporate the personal, individual writing style as she becomes more comfortable with the purpose and structure of the format.

Your child who learns to freely write and explore all of his or her thoughts without attention to format first, is more likely to fill the writing "house" later with a lovely, lively voice.

Warmly,

P.S. Catch up on all the “Tea with Julie” emails here!