Mark W.F. Condon: Blog

There are basically four challenges for excellence in composition that parents and teachers need to help young writers understand and meet. 

Most importantly, children need to understand that the job of an excellent writer is to create memorable messages for their selected audiences. That goes for writers at any age. Things we write should include attempts to make them special, unique, unforgettable. We can encourage literacy learners to see themselves not as merely completers of assignments, which of course, they sometimes must be, but as bundles of unrealized potential to impact the lives of others. They need to see themselves as authors. Otherwise they may never accept this challenge. If they don’t accept this one, the rest won’t matter to them either.

Primary children can do all of these things if we lead them from where they are in their writing (I like my dog. I like my cat. I like my mom) toward where they are going. It will take many small steps, with a periodic exhilarating leap, but all children can discover the power of what they can offer to those they care about in their writing.

If we can get that “author’s hat” in place, then one way of making their messages memorable is for the child-authors to accept the challenge of being “present” in their writing. Some kinds of writing are soulless and devoid of the author’s humanity – scientific writing for example. However in most writing, the author’s personality should shine through. His humor, their emotions, her “take” on the things written about should be evident. We can also encourage emergent authors to take a clear stance regarding their subject matter. It’s fun to explore the possibilities of taking a unique angle, sharing a special position or point of view, articulating a clear intention, attitude or expectation. Even young authors can offer readers an invitation to engage a new idea or even move to action.

Strong sentences that deliver messages representing nuanced thoughts about important realms of study are a next necessary challenge. Production of over-simple sentences is too often the result of children attempting merely to make it under the wire of proper grammar and acceptable usage. Rather we need these children “of character” to present their audiences with sentences that carry bold, if sometimes subtle, ideas clearly. Complex sentences are needed to shape interesting information and ideas for an audience these developing authors care about.

To present such humanity in writing will take powerful words. That’s a third challenge for kids. Powerful words are words that carry the strongest content, creating the greatest impact. Concern over spelling can force children into the use of common, too general words when the intentions and content of their writing call for thoughtful and even adventurous use of new (to them) words. That’s one important reason that writing the kinds of documents associated with the teaching of the various school subjects needs to be taught by teachers with strong back grounds in those subjects. Teachers who use technical or rich vocabulary in discussing the content under study can establish clear expectations that lack-luster and common vocabulary simply cannot carry the power of the knowledge and skills in those disciplines. Strong vocabulary is every teacher’s job. Parents can also help by recognizing and sharing their pride and even curiosity when children speak using precise terms for special things, feelings and events.

Memorable Messages leave a footprint where those children care about can find it, study it, think about it, learn and grow from it. Realization of the fact that even at age six (or younger!) children can, through their compositions, create a profound response in those they love and care about will position them for a life of rich learning and joyful participation in the world.