With college applications, finals and the holidays on the horizon, some high schoolers are adding another task to their November to-do list: a novel.
November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, an annual event that encourages writers of all ages to craft a novel in 30 days. Some high school educators have found the event to be a great way to motivate teens to write.
“It fosters a writing community within the entire class ,” says Syd DiChiara, a language arts teacher at Nex+Gen Academy in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Dichiara’s sophomore students are participating in NaNoWriMo this year and work on their manuscripts inside and outside of class. Students receive support and feedback from their classmates, she says.
Students at Passaic Valley High School in New Jersey will be able to receive feedback from classmates too in the new peer-to-peer writing lab, according to a local news report.
[Get 10 tips for writing the college application essay.]
Teens are going to need to use their writing skills in their future careers whether they think they will or not, says Sue Heinz, a librarian at Littleton High School in Massachusetts, where some students are also participating in NaNoWriMo.
Parents can help improve their child’s writing chops too and could try some of the following ways.
1. Give teens their own physical space to write at home: Parents may want to set up a “grown-up” writing environment, says DiChiara, the New Mexico teacher. That could be a quiet, peaceful, mature and individual space, she says, perhaps with a desk, books on writing, dictionaries and thesauruses.
“Anything that’s going to give them that space that conveys, ‘Hey, we are supporting you in your academic life here,'” she says.
Any academic habit, including writing, takes routine, she says. “Sometimes that routine includes a specific space where you put yourself in that mindset that I’m going to sit down and I’m going to write.”
2. Lead discussions at dinner that require teens to think deeply about their school work: To prepare students to write, teachers foster discussion among students, says DiChiara. Parents could do something similar at home by asking teens what they are working on and learning at school.
“It helps them to just organize their own thinking,” she says. “Teenagers, they can sniff that out when they are being asked questions that parents already know the answer to,” she says, so parents should ask genuine questions about the topic.
Then, when teens actually sit down to write, they have a little more content to work with, she says. “They have a little bit more depth.”
3. Be cautious when giving teens feedback: If parents have the chance to review their teen’s writing, DiChiara recommends parents focus on the ideas, how the work is organized and aim to provide concrete feedback to the student. She doesn’t recommend parents focus on correcting the work.
For instance, parents could point out where they are confused in the piece, she says, or alert the writer to where he or she could add something to give the reader more context about the particular topic. But they shouldn’t focus on pointing out incorrect spelling or punctuation unless the teen specifically asks for feedback on that, she says.
“Otherwise, they are going to feel that they are being judged,” she says. Parents could start by asking teens what they want their parents to review.
[Find out ways for parents and students to revise college application essays together.]
Good writing is good thinking and good thinking is good writing, she says.
“Whatever you want to do in life, writing really is the key,” she says. “That’s not an overexaggeration.”
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3 Everyday Ways for Parents to Help Teens Write Better originally appeared on usnews.com
