While on one of my walk-abouts today, I stopped and chatted with two girls in grade 5. They were complaining about the amount of writing that their teacher assigned to them.

“We have to write four pages on our legend,” they complained. (I love how some kids can complain in harmony. Do they practise?)

I became curious.

“Tell me what you have done so far?” I asked.

They shared with me what they had written so far. I loved their work. These stories were just getting started, and they had some good ideas.

Children often love to start a story, add all sorts of characters, but have trouble getting to an ending. We work on helping students write stories with interesting characters, an interesting problem and solution, and each story having a clear beginning, middle and end. It takes a lot of practice, but it is worth the effort to write, erase, and rewrite.

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.” ~ Samuel Johnson (English author 1709 – 1784)

My advice to them both was to stick to two or three characters, rather than six or seven. They should provide details (age, personality, etc.) to make the characters more interesting for the reader. The girls and I chatted about how adding details will both help the story, and help fill their four page requirement. They liked that idea.

For problems and solutions, I advised that they stick to things they know or are interested in. Writing about something you are not interested in will make the task of writing a chore. Writing should be fun. For more writing advice for children, you can visit Right-Writing.com.

I look forward to reading all the legends, stories, poems and/or blogs that our students write.

Take care.