The Rookery

As of this weekend, the first round of research for honors project wraps up for most students.  I say "first round" because almost all researchers come across gaps in research that they need to fill in as they write.  We discovered this with James right away.

Each child is different but the writing structure that seems to work best for James is to tackle a small part of his paper at a time.  In class, we used a tree analogy that seemed to make sense to the students.  For James's first foray into writing, we looked at a limb of a branch.  He reviewed his research, taking the notecards related to that limb and re-reading them.  He put them in the order that made sense to teach the information in and then he put the cards aside.  I asked him to turn to me and teach me what was in those cards.  He then explained what he had learned, adding in some parts that weren't on the cards (that's just fine!)

At this point, some children are able to write a paragraph or two.  Once they have said the words out loud, the writing becomes much easier.  I type much faster than James so he dictated to me what he wanted his paragraph to say.  He spoke in complete sentences and I typed exactly what he said.  When he was done, I sometimes noted a place where I as a reader had a question.  He would then explain that part more carefully and we would decide together how to change his initial draft.  In this way, we were both creating a first draft and a revision at the same time.  This is fine – in fact, it's how most adults write (although as adults, the critical voice is often our own and is not coming from an external reviewer.)

We are able to write a few "limbs" at a sitting right now.  Often that includes researching gaps that James realizes he should have written down on a notecard – a quote or a number that he knows he read somewhere…he just doesn't know where.  Targeted Google searches have really saved us!  We add the source to his resource list and incorporate the missing information.

James and his mentor created an outline of the writing plan at a recent meeting and posted it in James's Google Docs.  As he completes first draft writing of a segment, he crosses it out on his Google Doc.  It's a great way to celebrate the mini-milestones (yardstones?) as well as keep his mentor abreast of progress.

Fourth grade parents, remember that your child is following this same process but in a miniature form.  Right now, most fourth graders are working on making sure that their tree limbs are balanced before they begin to organize their thoughts for writing.