writing for 2nd grade

Do you mean creative writing or handwriting? I’m looking for a good creative writing program for my second grader—a method to help him organize his thoughts and, if possible, say something interesting. In school, he gets stuck whenever he’s asked to write.

Yes, that is exactly what I’m looking for.

do you need a program?
can you not sit with your child, web out some ideas and build a story, little by little?

excuse my ignorance-i am not trying to be sarcastic but seems to me that if we sit with the kids and go from where they are at that we can get somewhere.

i have my students think about a main character first and describe him a bit. then we come up with a setting and describe that. this makes a fine introduction! next ask, what does your character want to do today? don’t get fancy. maybe just walk to the store! your story can then talk about something he sees or someone he meets. the conclusion is getting to the store, buying something and the character summing up the day.

is the problem maybe that the child doesn’t want to have to do the writing?? write for them. so many kids are hung up on spelling and won’t try cuz they know they will have to correct it. i don’t have students correct the spelling until well into the school year, after they ahve developed the confidence to write. then i only have them fix some of the words at a time and i fix the rest-because(i tell them) they have done such a good job.

next idea-have them retell a simple story-say the 3 pigs- and make minor changes to the characters- maybe 4 monkeys and a tiger.

hope these ideas help!

when my kids were around this age,I bought them a folder that had ideas on writing assignments printed on the inside of the folders,and on the outside of the folder was all the rules of punctuation. It was like another duotang folder you might have,but it was used as a brainstorming idea,and visual cue kind of thing. They were relatively inexpensive too,might check into something like this.

The other thing that I would suggest doing. WHy is he having trouble?
Is the physical act of writing preventing him from going to the next step? My kid had such a hard time forming letters at all that this took up all his time,preventing him from remembering what he wanted to say next.

Pat,

For what it’s worth, I also prefer having a structured program to go by. I ahve seen this program recommended on this site, but I have not personally seen it. It seems that there aren’t that many that go down to first and second grade.

http://writingexpress.net/products/descriptionlist.shtml

Janis

Thanks, Janis. I checked out the site and sent them a request for more information.

Pat

I’ve used a book called Let’s Write by Cynthia M. Stowe. It was recommended to me by a friend who is a spec. ed teacher. It was developed especially for LD kids. I think it is recommended for 3rd and above, but you could easily adapt it for younger kids. My girls are 3rd and 6th, and we can adapt the “assignments” for both — they’ve even gotten where they do some, such as the ABC story, mentally — usually while waiting at a doctor’s office. It’s inexpensive, written in a way to spark the imagination, and easily to implement. This is the web-site:

http://www.teachervision.com/lesson-plans/lesson-7189.html

Pat,
If your child has the problem of not knowing what to write about, the key word approach may work well. Basically, you take a paragraph written at his reading level and for each sentence you come up with three key words. Then you have the child retell the paragraph orally using just the key word outline produced. Afterwards, he writes a paragraph using the just the outline. This approach is used by the writing program produced by the Institute for Excellence in Writing. It is explained in an article called “Writing Without Tears” found in the newletter section on IEW’s website, www.writing-edu.com. The concept is to separate, as an initial matter, what to write about from how to write. You can use paragraphs about any subject he is interested in, and can progress to multiple paragraphs.

The program covers higher levels of writing but to start with a second grader you wouldn’t do much more than the key word outline and summarizing. You definitely could do this on your own without purchasing the program at this stage. As they get used to the summarizing, several stylistic techniques are introduced in the program, which advances on to summarizing narrative stories, report writing, writing from pictures, creative writing etc. I purchased the intensive student workshop for my son, who is 11. It comes on videotape and he followed right along with the teacher. We are finding the key word concept very powerful and the stylistic techniques have improved his writing.

I had tried Inspiration and other brainstorming techniques with my son but they were just not structured enough, and not fundamental enough, for my son to really find them useful. IEW, though, has really made a difference.