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Elizabeth
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| Posted: July 01 2006 at 6:38am | IP Logged
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It's not a narration, but Christian (14), has a blogwhere he posting chapters of a novel he is writing. I'm finding this whole adventure rather remarkable considering the other thread he has running through his life. Stop by, please, and preview. If it's suitable, get your kids to read and comment.
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Elizabeth Foss is no longer a member of this forum. Discussions now reflect the current management & are not necessarily expressions of her book, *Real Learning*, her current work, or her philosophy. (posted by E. Foss, Jan 2011)
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teachingmom
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| Posted: July 01 2006 at 3:40pm | IP Logged
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Wow! Christian is doing a great job, Elizabeth. I'll have to share his blog with my girls when they return home later.
And now, some questions for you. Does he type it himself? Do you or one of his brothers edit with him for spelling or grammar? I know that my dd who has spelling and grammar issues, but writes very good stories overall, would need a lot of help polishing things up in order to get something in blog publishing-shape. I'd love to know what steps he takes and what kind of help you or others give.
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Elizabeth
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| Posted: July 01 2006 at 3:58pm | IP Logged
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He typed it himself, in his room, at night without my knowing, for the first twenty single-spaced pages. Then, he shared it with me. He really needed punctuation, paragraphing and spelling. I think I've actually changed three words. He sits with me when I edit. I did the first chapter completely. For the second chapter, he took a crack at paragraphing and punctuation and I could see marked improvement. Then, he watched me do the rest. Hopefully, as time goes on, more of the conventions will become natural for him on the rough drafts and more of the edits will be his own the second time through. The plot, the language and the characterization are all his, though he readily admits he's been very influenced by the stories he linked on the sidebar. Please do share it with your girls. It's amazing what the comments have done for this very shy child.
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Elizabeth Foss is no longer a member of this forum. Discussions now reflect the current management & are not necessarily expressions of her book, *Real Learning*, her current work, or her philosophy. (posted by E. Foss, Jan 2011)
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lapazfarm
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Elizabeth, this is wonderful! I will definitely have my ds read it as soon as he gets back from his weekend at his friend's house. He is a budding author himself, so I am sure it will inspire him. Tell Christian great job!
I am working with my ds on his story in a very similar way to how you described working with Christian. One day ds just sat down and started writing. He had many pages before he stopped long enough to share it with me. Since my ds is only 10 I have been making gentle suggestions on his drafts like "can you describe what the forest looked like?" and "how did this character feel when that happened?" Then ds is excited to go back and add more detail to make his story more exciting. I have gotten so much inspiration from Bravewriter on how to encourage his writing. Do you use those types of methods?
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Leonie
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Very cool.
I'll share it with my sons later. They'll love it. 
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Erin
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Elizabeth,
Christian's story is absolutley fantastic and gripping right from the start. He captures your interest and keeps it, I would be so thrilled if my children end up writing as well as Christian I'll show them in the morning.
Did he also set up the web page himself? I'm really impressed with his list of books, he is obviously a very well read young man and this is reflected in his story.
I've been reading your other thread with my heart going out to you both, Christian struck a cord with me from your Real Learning book, it was like you were describing my brother, the noise of the fridge distracting him and then the truck etc. I never forgot that, it was like trying to teach my little brother to read all over again. Elizabeth, you have obviously given Christian a wonderfully rich education how wonderful that he has these fantastic talents. So often these 'experts' just concentrate on the negatives but wow what postives to build on. 
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Elizabeth
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On Bravewriter: When Julie sent me Bravewriter years ago I wasn't certain she'd have a market for it. Now, I realize that Bravewriter is for me what nature study how-to manuals are for MacBeth. When you walk through the woods with MacBeth, she bubbles over into this amazing teacher but she is scarcely aware of how much she does and knows intuitively. Do I DO Bravewriter? No--I mean, yes. That is defnitely the way I teach but I don't often consult Bravewriter to teach that way. It's just so me. Julie took pretty much what I think about teaching writing and made it totally accessible. So, I do a lot of referring other people to Bravewriter when they ask me how I teach writing.
With this particular project, there have been no writing prompts, no leading questions. ALL I've done is correct spelling, paragraphing, and punctuation.
His little sister got him started setting up the blog. We had formatting issues with the first post (there was some code I couldn't figure out in the Word document that messed things up on typepad). I sent the post to Lissa in an email and the code issues disappeared. So, she praised him heartily and she posted his first chapter for us. It's always nice to have a big-shot editor and children's author get you started .
The books on the sidebar are books he pulled off the shelf and told me had influenced the story. Most of them he's heard read aloud. Some of them he's read as well. That might be the most curious thing of all. Here's a kid with supposedly serious visual processing issues and he keyed in all the ISBNs on his own, and pretty quickly too. It all confounds me.
I am SO a proponent of blogging for kids. I've seen some great expamples of how blogs can help children make writing their own. For my daughter, it's a literary social network that reminds me of Tolkein and Lewis and their pub buddies (without the beer). Christian wanted no part of that. He wasn't interested in posting daily minutia. But when this story got so big it was bursting out of him, he wanted an audience. A blog was the perfect venue for that.
Must go now or we won't make it to Mass.
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Elizabeth Foss is no longer a member of this forum. Discussions now reflect the current management & are not necessarily expressions of her book, *Real Learning*, her current work, or her philosophy. (posted by E. Foss, Jan 2011)
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alicegunther
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Well, I've already written how much my girls love this story, but it is certainly worth repeating here. What an accomplishment!
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4Real Forums : Language Arts Come Alive
Topic: Christian's Blog
