Developing Writers

I have been meaning to post about a terrific talk that Julie from Brave Writer posted on her blog recently about the Natural Stages of Growth in Writing (link updated March 2021).

In it, she talks about the different stages of growth she sees kids go through on their way to learning how to write and how to nurture them through each stage. Her enthusiasm for writing is very obvious…she loves this stuff and loves sharing what she has learned about working with kids. I found her insight very helpful in figuring out where I want to go with Jason. We have not done too much formal writing for various reasons but the good news is that he is very willing to work in this area (rather than it being like trying to pull teeth like it was a few years ago). The Bravewriter approach is a very holistic one that focuses first on the creative side of writing..helping a child find their “voice” and positive relationship with writing before the more technical aspects of writing.

Fostering a love of writing provides the basis for all of Bravewriter’s offerings…we have The Writer’s Jungle and Jason just took the KidsWrite Basic online class this past spring. I also have just started using her language arts packages (Arrow and Boomerang) which teach literary elements and grammar through copy work and literature. This approach seems to work well with Jason since trying to teach him something devoid of any context usually makes his eyes glaze over.

I hope to do a more in depth post about how we have been using Brave Writer, but for now I will just say definitely download Julie’s talk and give it a listen. Lots of ideas and inspiration even if you do not decide to use her program.