The Write Stuff

My, how far our little Jada has come in her writing skills.  Last summer, when we gave her a journal to record her thoughts and activities while we were on vacation, her "one-page" entries might read something like this: "We went to the boardwalk.  I got ice cream.  It was fun."  Hardly a full page, as I had requested.

Even earlier this school year, Jada's teacher and I agreed that her writing lacked body.  But Jada's teacher was working on her, drilling into her questions and themes that she could recall as she was writing about something, so as to draw out new thoughts while still retaining a core narrative arc.

Here's what she wrote last month when I asked her, as I always do on the weekends, to write an essay.  That weekend's subject was our play date downtown:


"Yesterday we went to the YMCA with my scooter.  It was fun!  We stayed in the child watch for an hour!  We made oragomies [sic] and drew pictures!  When my dad picked us up, we went to the franklin institute by train.  When we got to the franklin insutute, I met my uncle and friend!  We went to the dinosuar show.  Then we went in the heart 3 times!  Then we watched a movie on a fake person.  It was discusting!  A doctor pulled off a persons skin! When I saw the inside of a person skin, the heart was still beatting!  The doctor put something in the persons body!  After that we went to . . . "

And when I called her downstairs for dinner, she protested that she still had more she wanted to write.  So the story is a little rambly, and the use of exclamation points is a bit excessive.  But the main point is she is able to write more, and more deeply.  It pleases me to see our junior blogger grow in her writing skills.