I feel Prince and I have made a
lot of progress through our writing workshops and he has begun to develop in
his writing abilities. At the beginning of our time together he presented me
with a writing sample which contained many ideas jumbled together and spit out
onto the page in a somewhat cohesive manner. There were a lot of holes in his
plotline, a lot of inconsistencies in his writing style, and a lot of
indications that he was still developing as a beginning writer. I used the
Beginning Writer’s Continuum to evaluate his work and determine where he sat in
terms of writing ability. I found that Prince showed a lot of promise and a lot
of the hallmarks of a developing writer who was still fine-tuning and growing
his abilities. To that end, we spent most of our time together focused on developing
ideas and editing pre-existing work to try and develop some consistency. Our
work today focused on editing what he had already written.
We
looked at his use of dialogue and tried to normalize how he interjected
dialogue (in some areas it would be introduced, in some cases he used quotation
marks, in others he used the French style of using a dash, in others he did not
distinguish it at all). We also looked at his sentence structure and tried to
work on his overall grammar. He made many common errors that could be easily
corrected through proof-reading. We worked on his use of tenses – Prince often
tended to switch back and forth between past and present within a single
paragraph, or even a single sentence. We looked at his sentence structure and
tried to eliminate errors like run-on sentences of areas where he had lost his
train of thought and the story seemed to falter. I think having another set of
eyes to read through it with him helped a lot. We would read the text together
and he would look at the errors as we got to them.
We also
continued to make adjustments to the story outline and to jot down ideas for
where he wanted to take his tale. One thing Prince is still working on is
trying to come up with a central theme or message for his work. I think at this
point in his development he does not yet understand the notion that great works
of writing all contain a central theme or message which the author is trying to
share with his audience. The story is a medium for relaying that message. We
talked about this a little bit in our work today and tried to explore what kind
of commentary he was trying to make.
I
feel that Prince has come a long way in his writing since we first began to
work together. He has learned how to effectively outline where he intends to go
in his story and to make a visual representation of all his ideas so that he
can decide what will best fit with his storyline. I think the biggest obstacles
for Prince really revolved around getting that outline down and deciding on the
purpose and direction of his writing. Once we were able to sort those out, a
lot of his corrections were just cosmetic – spelling, grammar, sentence
structure. In a second Writing Continuum which I have found online, I have
assessed that Prince is transitioning from a Fluent Writer, which is typical of
children ages 9-11 to a Proficient Writer which is typical of children ages
10-13. He achieves some of the benchmarks from both categories and is steadily
working towards honing his abilities. Prince has a lot of great ideas and a lot
of drive to pursue his writing. I think he will go on to complete many great
works and I hope that he has benefitted from our time together and the skills
and tools I have shared with him.
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