Writing

    Have you ever tried to teach an engineer how to write?  That is the formidable task that I am setting out to do with Nathan this summer because I felt the school is not catering to his individual needs.   He is basically an engineer by design so requires special techniques.  I do believe that anyone can master writing.  Contrary to popular belief, the writing process is not much different from an engineer design.  Organization/logical skills are required to clearly present the topic.  The "not exact science" (or what people term as talent/creative) part of writing can be learned through reading and practice.
     I struggled so many times to teach writing to Nathan because it's not fun for any 8 years old boys. As soon as I talked about technical terms like main idea, topic sentences, details, nouns, adjectives, etc,  I started to see yawns and eyes wandering around the room.   Yes, it's frustrating to teach boys to write.   You have to change the teaching method or nothing will get through!    From experience, the following helps ( click here to see examples of writing lecture  ):

• Make it short - kids (boys especially) have no patience to hear a long lecture, even if it's on a subject they love. 
• Make it fun -  use charts with fun graphics to explain dry topics
• Make it easy - use guided writing to help in the beginning to inspire confidence.  Don't assume that your kid is a mini-me who can start out by writing long essays!   Start at the very basic level: how to write a sentence!  There are many ways to write a topic sentence.  Practice how to do that.  Do all the preparations initially:

1. Create a "Word Wall" to focus on "technical" terms (nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs).  It's extremely important to enforce pairing adjectives with nouns!   Also, to start using thesaurus to look up synonyms, to introduce "Dead Words", and to talk about "active verbs".  All these can be easily learn by practice.  The tough part, which can also be learned, is to use simile and metaphors.
2. Create an outline of the paragraph using a graphic organizer.
3. Practice writing topic sentences, start from easy to difficult.    Difficult level requires using creative writing:  using a complicated sentence structure, using imagination, using active verbs, etc ... to make reading interesting.
4. Create a paragraph format with some guided writing to get started.  It's important to start out with a cookie cutter paragraph, with a few words filled out based on the graphic organizer.

Even with all this preparation, don't be surprise that there are still yawns at the beginning.   Writing is the toughest subject to get started because everything seems overwhelming.   And the whole process does not seem logical.   The key is to convince your child that it is.