by Kenneth Brown

Created on: May 04, 2008

As a first grade teacher, I believe that getting kids excited about writing is the most important part of my job. I use a variety of methods to accomplish this, including Scottish Storyline, Project Work, and Andrew Pudewa's Excellence in Writing program.

Scottish Storyline is a wonderful tool for getting kids excited about writing. As the teacher, I create a scenario for my students: a group of pioneers creating a village in the Kentucky wilderness, for example. My students use their background knowledge to brainstorm ideas and to create characters and a huge mural on one wall of the classroom. We spend a lot of time during the first two weeks of a Storyline on the visual aspects: 3-D faces or complete bodies of the individual pioneers, log cabins, trees, and mountains on the mural. We even turn our desk clusters into log cabins with roofs, walls, and windows. When it comes time to write, the students have lots of visual aides they can look at and respond to in their writing. As a student begins to write about how his character built his log cabin, it becomes natural for him to include other characters created by classmates to help build the cabin. As we progress through the Pioneer Storyline, we add a different writing topic each week, many of the ideas coming from the students themselves. A Pioneer Story written by a kid can be turned into an illustrated book with a laminated cover, title page, and drawings, too. Towards the end of the Storyline, I usually throw in a surprise topic: a tornado suddenly shows up on the mural (and in the classroom itself), creating havoc. By this time, the kids feel such ownership of and engagement with the Storyline that they can't wait to write about how their pioneer characters reacted to the tornado and how they rebuilt the village. A culminating event, such as a Pioneer Dance on a Thursday night to celebrate the rebuilding of the village, is a great way for the kids to share their Pioneer stories and artistic creations with their parents.

While Scottish Storyline is a great way to explore a fictional or historical situation (you can even use it with your favorite book of fiction or history), Project Work is a non-fiction, hands-on approach that works equally well at getting kids excited about writing by studying one topic in much greater detail than we usually do in American schools. Based on the early childhood schools in Reggio Emelia, Italy, Project Work also uses visual art to prepare students for and get them excited

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