"Fingers stuck together with a pasty, thick, gooey substance work hard to build a Gumdrop man!" remarked John.
How did this child know to use words such as pasty, thick and gooey to describe a gumdrop? He knew these words because he had made an art project using gumdrops before writing.
Pre-Writing experiences give students concrete ideas, feelings and opinions to incorporate into their writing. The more hands-on activities a teacher can provide, the more students will elaborate and use detail in their writing. Experiences also excite and motivate kids so they are eager to get starting putting their ideas into writing.
Once you have begun the hands-on activity, walk around and encourage students to be creative and to try "to think outside the box". As you see students working hard, acknowledge their effort and hold up their art work for others to see. It will motivate the child and all the children seeing another's art project. Remember to work towards achieving a creative process full of thought, effort and activity rather than worrying about everyone having a beautiful finished product. It is the process that develops into creative, descriptive, narrative writing more so than the completed project.
Also, encourage children to think of vivid verbs that describe what they are doing while they are working and write these verbs on the board so they can be used as springboards for writing. Walk around and model sentence ideas while the students are working. For example, you might say:
"Ohhh, Julia has an inverted, crazy-looking Gumdrop Man that looks scary!"
"Wow! Look how Robert pinched the gumdrop and made the goo ooze from the bottom!"
Students need to hear descriptions and exclamations. They need to hear different sentence structures - phrases, questions, etc.
Once everyone is finished, take time to let each child hold up his creation and tell about it. Instruct the other students to be "active listeners" and to listen for at least one word the creator used as he described his finished product. Share aloud the words they heard and remembered.
Try the following hands-on activities in your classroom to make writing more personal and fun:
- Gumdrop Creation
- Marshmallow Creation
- Tissue Paper Creation
- Newspaper Heights
These hands-on activities make writing fun. Describing finished products with words such as wacky, insane, unstable, delicious is inventive and fun. Dreaming up unusual stories to explain the creations is challenging and entertaining. Teaching kids to experiment with art projects and with writing ideas makes a school day exciting and enjoyable.
These activities can also be integrated into other subject areas and then used for writing. After studying clouds or atoms or cells, ask the students to build a model using any of the materials above. Or after reading books with unusual characters or settings, use the activities above to recreate the character or the setting and then write about it.
These writing activities thrive on peer learning, are easy to integrate with other subjects and are easy to teach and model.
Have fun with writing!
Alma Ammons Hoffmann is a former schoolteacher for grades K, 1,2,4 and 5, she holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree from the University of North Carolina, with concentration on Early and Intermediate Education. She also has earned a Masters of Education degree from Meredith College, focusing on Elementary Education and Reading K-12 . Ms. Hoffman is an expert on developing writing lessons and teaching paragraph writing