Learning Center

writing

Focus on building writers, not simply illustrators

march 3, 2011

Focus on building writers, not simply illustrators

In order for your young writers to write with more details, more words, and more sentences, they need to spend more time writing and less time drawing. But getting 7-year-olds to put down their crayons can be difficult. Try one of these two strategies:

Write today. Draw tomorrow.

Within your next mini-lesson, compare your students to a professional illustrator who uses the author’s words to guide his drawings. Explain that the illustrations come after the word/sentence writing. Encourage your students to write first today, like professional authors. In order to further emphasize this point, have all the students turn their papers upside down, putting the lines at the top and the blank portion at the bottom. The drawing will now be an after-writing illustration.

Provide the picture.

It’s possible your students still need a visual to drive their thinking and writing. That’s not unusual. But again, to encourage writing words/sentences over drawing, consider just giving your students kid-appropriate photographs pulled from magazines. They can tape them down in the blank portion of the writing paper and begin writing about the subject matter right away.

Student Writing Graphic Organizer - Words on top, drawing space below

Graphic Organizer:
Write today. Draw tomorrow.

Student Writing Graphic Organizer - with picture prompt provided

Graphic Organizer:
Provide the picture.

0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
guest
0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
CompCON 2024
Teach even the youngest writers about the 6 Traits

[writing]

Teach even the youngest writers about the 6 Traits

Target picture writing to improve sentence writing

[writing]

Target picture writing to improve sentence writing