| In my previous article on motivating a student | | | | offered so that the resulting stories actually made |
| who dislikes writing, I talked about my | | | | some kind of weird sense. For encouraging |
| experiences with my son and how we overcame | | | | creativity, after you've bought your first Mad-Libs |
| his dislike of writing through his interest in writing | | | | book, you can save the money and have you or |
| product and book reviews at and dreaming up | | | | your children write your own stories with blanks |
| writing ideas that combined his love of drawing | | | | and ask for the appropriate parts of speech. |
| and sketching with writing assignments. | | | | The second method, once parts of speech are |
| Some other ideas we have used which were also | | | | totally mastered, is to simply create a basic |
| fun and effective (the teacher learns what's | | | | subject-verb sentence, such as "A dog ran" and |
| effective after the fact, but fun was always the | | | | then, step by step, have your child add an |
| essential element in the beginning) included the | | | | adjective, then an adverb, then a prepositional |
| following: | | | | phrase, in order to learn how more complex |
| In teaching basic writing, once the idea of parts of | | | | sentences are built and how detail makes a |
| speech were taught and understood, we found | | | | sentence more interesting. This is a major step in |
| two highly effective and enjoyable methods of | | | | becoming a better writer. It is also a lot more fun |
| mastering the knowledge of nouns, verbs, | | | | than diagramming sentences. If you do one of |
| adjectives, adverbs, etc. and, from there, learning | | | | these "build more complex sentences" activities |
| to write better sentences. The Mad-Libs pads of | | | | each day with a different subject and verb, your |
| crazy stories with blanks to be filled in for various | | | | child will become a masterful sentence composer |
| parts of speech are found in most bookstores. | | | | in very little time. |
| Our family had many evenings full of laughter with | | | | Once your child is proficient in writing complex |
| one of us asking for words that filled the criteria | | | | sentences, you will find that he or she still may |
| of being certain parts of speech and then reading | | | | not like to write a requested paragraph or essay |
| back the silly stories which resulted from those | | | | on a specific assigned topic. Especially if the child is |
| suggested words. Boys of a certain age seem to | | | | a visual learner, I have found it to be more |
| really get a certain pleasure out of using gory | | | | effective to give him a picture...an old photograph, |
| adjectives and somewhat violent verbs, but you | | | | a scene from a wall calendar, a page from a |
| can set the rules in advance. Sometimes, so the | | | | magazine...and ask him to write either about what |
| stories wouldn't end up so outlandish, the reader | | | | he sees or to make up a story about what is |
| who was asking for the parts of speech would | | | | happening in the picture. |
| narrow down the topics on which words could be | | | | |