The Homeschool Minute ~ Does Teaching Writing Overwhelm You?

Now that they can write a little, what they really need is practice. But practice on what? What should they write about?

Most of us have no idea whatsoever. Our attempts to create writing assignments leave us staring at that dreaded blank page. It’s no wonder our kids will soon repeat the gesture with blank stares of their own. How can we expect them to come up with ideas when we can barely suggest a single one?

One easy way to solve this problem is to have your students write expository essays about the stories they read. (Expository simply means “explanatory,” by the way.)  In other words, have your students explain the elements of their most recent reading assignment in writing. To get them started, simply teach some basic structural elements of literature like the ones in the following list; then ask a leading question about each one that can be answered with an expository paragraph or essay. Here are some examples:

1.Setting: Which elements of this story’s setting work most powerfully to emphasize the main idea of the story?

The setting of a story is the combination of details about time, place, people, and ideas that surround the story’s action. Authors choose their settings very carefully to emphasize their themes and to allow their characters and plots to illustrate important ideas. In short, there is no such thing as an accidental setting. Have your students explain why the setting of the story is important to the author’s main idea. Does the fact that storms and tempests unsettle the night before Julius Caesar’s murder have anything to do with Shakespeare’s views of treason and revolution? Most likely!

2.Characters: What does the protagonist want most in this story, and how is this desire a reflection of the character’s personality?

Deciding which character is the protagonist (or “main character”) is almost always a thought-provoking exercise. Whose goals are most closely identified with the story’s action? Whose career are we readers following to its conclusion? Once we have an idea of the identity of the main character, we must ask what he or she is after and why this goal is so important. Remember, an author makes these decisions carefully when he creates the protagonist, so explaining them in a paragraph or essay is tantamount to explaining the author’s own idea; and this, of course, is the whole point of good reading–and good writing, too!

3.Conflict: What obstacles prevent the protagonist from achieving his goals in this story, and what type of conflict do these obstacles present?

Every story has a problem in it. Explaining what that problem is and what type of conflict it represents will give your students plenty to write about. Remember, there are only five (5) types of conflict in literature:  Man v. Man; Man v. Nature; Man v. God; Man v. Society and Man v. Himself. Ask your students to identify the main obstacles in the story and then interpret them, first by assigning them to one of these categories, and then by deciding which category is most important to the story’s message. You’ll find that a single paragraph is often too short a form for such an exercise, and your students will soon be clamoring for more space!

4. Plot: What event forms the climactic moment of this story, and how does this event resolve the story’s main conflict?

The climax of a story occurs when the main conflict is resolved–or at least put on the road to resolution–by some event, decision, action, word or thought of the story’s characters. Identifying an event as the climax says as much about a student’s interpretation of the story as it does about the story itself, for the student is making a statement about the story’s main idea every time he identifies a climax.

5. Theme: If you could boil the story’s main idea down into a single phrase, what would it be, and how do you know that the author would agree with you?

All authors write to communicate an idea or theme; there is no such thing as a story without one!  Additionally, all of the other structural elements of fiction–characters, plot and conflict–collaborate to emphasize this underlying main idea. Identifying the theme of a story by explaining how the other elements of the story work together to emphasize it is one of the most rewarding ways to write about literature. In the end, it turns out to be one of the most rewarding ways to write, period.

Thinking carefully about the books you are already reading is a great way to get your kids started writing about ideas–and to answer forever that dreaded question, “what should we write about?”  If you’ve got a good book, you are never lost for an answer.

Adam
adam@centerforlit.com

 You can also read Adam’s article, Writing from Literature: Tips for Teaching the Analytical Essay in the latest issue of TOS magazine.