Encourage fiction - kids need to write about what's in their souls.
As our family moves through public school, I've heard six years' worth of teachers explain why kids don't write fiction in their class.
"Frankly, kids aren't very good at fiction. They only write about explosions, aliens and robots," one teacher told me.
One first grade teacher explained fiction wasn't part of the curriculum ("we focus on essay writing"). Others insisted that students should "write what they know, and kids only know about their own lives."
Hogwash. Or should I say Hogwarts. Kids know more about fantasy - the stuff of fiction - than most adults. A child writer can describe the intricacies of a mermaid's life or an alien who battles pirates with explosive powers better than what they had for breakfast.
With national education focus on hard-core skills like essay writing in elementary school, fiction writing is being pushed out from many children's lives.
As a writer, I know the hardest thing to teach in good writing is Voice. The structure of an essay can be taught later. We need to help our children find their unique voice, encourage their efforts, and give them ample practice. To love writing and get good at writing, a child needs to be able to express herself. Express the ideas that are bottled up inside. Often these ideas are about aliens, explosions and mermaids at first. If that's what's inside a child's soul, that's what she should write about.
Kids may not be very good at fiction writing. But they're learning.
Looking back at my own not-so-good writing as a kid, I learned a tremendous amount each step of the way:
- First grade. Expressing my ideas felt great. People liked my stories and treated me like a real author. I wrote 12 books about Leo the Lion before I could write. Adults wrote down my dictated words and helped me bind them up to look like real books.
- Second grade. I experimented with tragedy. I realized that killing all my main characters off didn't give a satisfying ending, just a sad one. Hmm... this was trickier than I thought.
- Third grade. I coped with my first rejection letter for a short story.
- Fourth grade. I wrote an overly-complicated story with unpronounceable names and realized that sometimes a simple story line can be more powerful.
My early stories were not good, but they allowed me to take the next step. What's more, I felt valued and listened to when I expressed myself through written words. If children need to express themselves with ideas about princesses living in towers or pirates who eat seaweed, then we should let them.
Young writers should write what is bursting from their souls.
Is fiction writing alive and well in your child's school? What were your favorite topics to write about as a child?
Yes fiction writing is alive and well in our school. My son's stories are so creative. He is becoming a great story teller. Is his spelling, grammar, and punctuation perfect? Absolutely not. There stories sometimes don't flow very well, but most importantly they are really creative, funny and strange.
Music to my ears!
I think the problem is teaching to the tests. It is crazy high stakes in public schools that have not found a creative way around to actually teach kids. For those schools that find ways to actually teach, they often find ways to develop the creativity in kids. Creativity in one area helps in other areas. The problem is when you feel like you only have time to teach the facts, the basics, the test, then you can look at creativity as a luxury instead of a necessity. I sure hope this will change soon.
Thanks for your comments, Ann. You're right, it must seem like a luxury, and you're so right how creativity flows from one area to the next.
I'm so happy you wrote this one. My best childhood moments were being alone, making up wild stories about witches and queens, and yes, even princes and princesses, but the witches, oh I had such good and terrible witches. And in these fantasies, I was allowed to die and resurrect on a regular basis. It is truly the basis for an active imagination.
Love your terrible witches!
What are they doing to creativity???? They are dumbing down kids' education! Who are these people who don't value the creative spirit? Preschoolers write wonderful stories and an adult can write it down. We are not educating scholars we are educating technicians. Jan
That teacher's reasoning is so crazy. I presume she has also cancelled math, since some kids aren't that good at it? And art - after all, 6-year-olds' drawings are hardly known for artistic merit. In my first years of piano lessons, my playing really sucked - clearly my parents should have quit giving me music lessons. In fact, isn't it the very nature of any skill that needs to be taught and/or practiced, that the student is bad at the beginning?
My son's teacher has them write journal pages twice a week. They all have a blank top for a picture and then lines to write something. Some start with prompters such as "I wish", "My Mom", "I wonder".
He writes the most hilarious 1-4 sentence stories in his first grade spelling with really simple but extremely expressive pictures.
I wish there was more writing and encouraging to write, but it seems like I should be happy about what his teacher already does.