Inspiring Writing

 It seems to be my male students who don't jump at the chance to put pen to paper.  This appears to be a wider issue than just my current class and last years class...and many years previously. But sometimes the girls aren't keen either.  My previous post about Writing Resources had a few options that could garner the interest of some of these students.

I was checking out some resources on Teach Starter and '7 Ways to Guide and Inspire Reluctant Children to Write' piqued my interest. On reading this blog post, I was drawn to the idea about a 'story box'.  We are still working through the School Kit 'Get New Zealand Writing' project and over the last two days we have been exploring 13 items in a tin and writing words associated with these.  When they didn't need to write sentences but rather lists, students who often choose not to write, got writing pretty much straight away.











Is it the 'hands on' opportunities?
Is it the language building?
Is it that sentences don't have to be correctly constructed?
Is it the 'mystery' of the story tin?

The idea presented in the Teach Starter blog of a story box is one I am looking into setting up each week to prompt or generate writing ideas.  Not just a tub of possible story starters but 'story seeds' by way of objects, pictures, textures along with relevant story starters.  To begin this process (when we have completed our Get NZ Writing project next week) I will use a 'passion profile' students completed last week to help me select a direction.  Relevant vocabulary in the 'story box' will help to scaffold writers who find spelling a challenge too.