Little Cottage Writing Camp

This week I am teaching a writing camp for boys.  I have always been interested in how boys write, why most seem to hate writing, and how to get them hooked on writing.  Two books that I highly recommend to better understand the differences between boy writers and girl writers are Real Boys by William Pollack and Boy Writers by Ralph Fletcher. 
If you teach writing and think that there are no differences between boys and girls- you are sadly mistaken.  I have observed that girls tend to write about relationships and feelings while using a lot of dialogue.  Boys on the other hand write about action/doing and use a lot of descriptive words.  Boys also love to write about fighting, poop, farting, blood and just about any other body function/fluid you can think of.  One of the main points that stuck with me from Ralph Fletcher's book was that because most of us who teach writing are girls we tend to try and make our boys write more like girls.  That's like trying to get your cat to act more like a dog.  Not an easy task to undertake, and not beneficial to the cat in any way.
So this week is all about doing and then writing about it.  Monday we did some investigating into our origins of our name then wrote about it.  We studied rocks, wrote descriptives, then had to guess who had what rock based on that description.  Tuesday we visited the splash pad- a great combination of gross motor movement and water!  As the boys ran through the water features I asked (from the sidelines) ways that they could describe what they were experiencing, what the water reminded them of, what games they were playing/imagining and so on.  The result?  Writing.  Lots and lots of great writing.  They wrote about the dead bird we saw on the sidewalk, the splash pad, even the cookies my mom made for them to have as a snack.  It was a great success and the boys were excited to share their writing with each other.

Today we will be writing a how to piece.  We will be making milkshakes and then generating descriptive words to create writing that would explain what a milkshake tastes like to someone who had never had one along with the steps of how to make a milkshake.  Thursday will find us "fishing for stories".....yep, live worms and all : o )