Monday, January 23, 2017

Day 105--Write like you talk!

Sam just hates the way he feels frozen when he's supposed to write something for school. Like I've talked about before, I usually just try to have real things to write; but today, I just wanted to have him write something about Mr. Rogers. He just finished reading The Simple Faith of Mr. Rogers (one of my favorite books), and he talked to me about it along the way, but he's been working on some sentence structure and I wanted a few original sentences. He just did not want to do that. So I told him to write just like he talks; just write what he would say. This is what he said: "It would be unintelligible if I wrote like I talked." What? He speaks in complete (and very detailed) sentences all day long!

I told him that that was the lie his dad learned in school, and that's why he (Jeff) has so much trouble knowing what to write still. I just don't want his brain to freeze up like that. Remember, this is the kid that told me he likes to write if he knows what he's going to say. I guess I'm going to have to go back to the beginning. Maybe I'll write down the next big explanation he gives me about something and show him just how intelligible it really is.

He did tell me that the structure when you write has to be different than when you speak, which is totally true. So I said, "You write it down like you speak and then go back and change it to sound like writing." Easy right? I think that just sounds like more writing to him. I would love everyone in the world to feel like I do about writing. Love it! I think so many more people could feel like that if they had the support they needed. Peter Elbow says that if you just let go and write and write, you may end up with a lot of stuff you have to throw out; but at least some of it will be worth reading. If you try to get it "right" the first time, it's usually not any good anyway.

It's so true. I've noticed that recently as I've been working on my book about weaknesses. I write and write and have to cut most of it. But there are some good parts in there that I may not have gotten if I had tried to write with the hopes of not editing. You have to stop too much and fix things along the way and can never just get going.

Oh, Sarah was so cute today during science. She's working on problems using the speed formula (distance divided by time), but they have her making unit conversations first (like from minutes to hours). So they give you how many miles in how many minutes and you have to convert that to hours before finding the speed. Each thing is fine separately, but she forgets where she is and which part to do next. So she was working on a problem and all of the sudden, she gets excited and says, "Look, Mom! I'm setting it up right! I'm doing it!"

It was so nice to have her sitting by me excited to tell me that. A picture flashed into my mind of 25 kids in a science class trying to understand how to do these problems and one of them is so happy that he's got it he can't contain himself, but there's no one to tell. I'm so glad I homeschool.

See you tomorrow!



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