Korean Job Discussion Forums

[theSeeker]

anyone have any experience or tips or online resources they could point me to? who has taught taught writing/essay writing to elementary kids? anyone?

i figure i could read some good examples, give some good topics, and let them start writing.

anyone have any advise??

[madtinkerer]

I'm going through the same experience with Elementary and Middle School students right now. Here's what I've learned so far.

If they've not done a lot of writing before, don't start with essays. Get them to keep a journal, a couple of pages a day, for at least a month. At the same time, get them started on a good novel, something easy and interesting, if they are capable of reading of that level. Before you even think about teaching essays, you have to get your students accustomed to reading, writing and thinking in English.

I've found that after a month or so of writing 3 pages a day, 7 days a week, the students have developed the interest and skills necessary to start learning about essay writing. I'm just at that point now, so I can't offer a whole lot of advice about the actual teaching of essays. I did try to start my class on essays without this kind of prep though, and my efforts fell flat on their face.

[Zyzyfer]

I'm doing this, but the class is high level. Teaching elementary kids essay writing is hard, because it's so booooooooring to them.

As the other person said, start off with just journals and paragraph assignments. Correct errors, have them rewrite. It's not too hard to find good writing prompts, though I tend to use the TOEFL prompt list and prompts from a book called "Paragraph Practice"...little tiny yellow book with a LOT of stuff in it.

[lookingtoteach]

I taught two different writing classes, one advanced and one lower-mid (for classes who have either lived in or will live in another country). In the advanced one I used Teen Talk. It's a lot of reading comprehension and teen-related topics. Because it was a 3 hour class twice a week, for the last 45 minutes of each class, I had them do creative writing (stories, poetry, book reviews, etc).

The lower-mid class was made up of kids Gr. 2-6. I used A LOT of grammar and reading comprehension. I tried essay writing and creative writing at the beginning, but after reading these essays decided that they needed to learn a lot of the basics of writing like what a topic sentence is, sequencing, cause and effect, etc. So I used a Spectrum Writing book for grade 4.

[theSeeker]

thanks for that great input everyone. anyone else?? is teaching writing as part of esl uncommon??

[d503]

I think it is becoming more common. I don't do it now, but I have been told that come February two of my classes will be a writing one. So far the plan is to start by using a reader book. And have the kids write about what they read. Usually in a Diary format, so they can use the story vocab but alter it to fit them. The k-teacher will do the reading and I will handle their writing. So we shall see. As of now I am devouring these threads about teaching kids to write, because from what I have seen I don't expect it to be pretty