Natural Stages of Growth in Writing
Understanding a young writer’s stages of growth is vital. In my years of working with families, I’ve found that it is much more effective to look at how writers grow naturally than to focus on scope and sequence, grade level, ages, or the types of writing that ought to be done in some “established sequence.”
The different stages are thoroughly explained in The Writer’s Jungle, but check out the following podcasts concerning them, as well. Just click on the titles below to be linked to each page:
Before kids can write their thoughts and ideas, someone else needs to do it for them.
Focuses on the most overlooked stage of development in the writing journey and accounts for the development of writer’s block and writing resistance in kids. If you successfully navigate the Partnership Writing phase, your kids will not be plagued with the “blank page, blank stare” syndrome. You’ll both know how to create writing and what role you each play in the process.
The stop and start stage of writing. One day the student gets a detailed story to paper. The next week, she complains that she hates writing. In this podcast we look at how you can create the conditions for growth and joy in writing with your kids.
This is our first of a two part discussion of the Transition to Ownership stage of writing growth. This is the time when your students are making the somewhat treacherous journey from adorable, fact-centered child to rhetorical imagination (the awareness that the world is inhabited by unlimited numbers of perspectives).
Continues the discussion of your role in the “Big Juicy Conversations” you need to be having with your fledgling thinkers.
This podcast features discussion about the high school writing life, on into college. Don’t miss it! It will help to shape your philosophy of writing, not just your program for writing.