Bravewriter help

[mskelly]

Is there a forum for people using BW? Is there anyone here who considers themselves an "expert" in the lifestyle? I'm just getting started with DS and I'd like to chat with some moms who have been using it for a while.

[Farrar]

She should make a forum. Maybe it would interfere with the online classes though?

 

Whatcha want to chat about? We've only been at it for a little more than a year.

[scrapbabe]

 

We're pretty new too, but I'll answer what I can. I know Julie (the author) has her phone number listed on the website. You can email or facebook her too. She answers questions all the time for people just starting out. Now that is customer service!! :hurray: But if you're wanting someone other than the author to talk to, then farrar is probably the one to go to. But like I said, I'll contribute what I can.

[Farrar]

Nah, I'm more an obsessed user than an expert, but I'll contribute what I can. :D

[scrapbabe]

That may be true... But everyone here knows that the "go to gal" when talking Brave Writer is Farrar. ;)

[Farrar]

One thing I've noticed about BW is that different people have really different ideas of how to do it. I think because it's so flexible, personalizable, etc. So some people read TWJ and take from it the importance of that central copywork/dictation and all the various ways to build around it. And other people take from it poetry teas, freewrites, be on your child's side for writing! And they're both in there... but it means I think a lot of people do it differently.

[ByGrace3]

One thing I've noticed about BW is that different people have really different ideas of how to do it. I think because it's so flexible, personalizable, etc. So some people read TWJ and take from it the importance of that central copywork/dictation and all the various ways to build around it. And other people take from it poetry teas, freewrites, be on your child's side for writing! And they're both in there... but it means I think a lot of people do it differently.

 

I totally agree with this. I often wonder if I am "getting it" when I am reading TWJ and planning a BW routine for next year. I also wonder how I can fit it all in, and then I realize if you are supplementing LA at all I don't think I can fit in all the BW components so I am working out a routine that works for us. But then I ask... Is it still BW? :lol:

I love what I am reading and am excited to get started. I wish I knew about more blogs about BW... It would be helpful to see how others make it work for them.

[SanDiegoMom]

We are about to have our first poetry tea today and the kids are so excited. Even my 13 year old is getting in on it- she is going to read her own poetry to us. The BW lifestyle is still hard for me to wrap my brain around as it is not a checklist ( and I like checklists) but it seems like it will bring much greater rewards. I am still on the fence about buying one of the writing programs - my twins are going into 2nd grade, and the advanced writer would need the Partnership writing probably, the struggling writer would prefer the Jot it down, and I don't want to buy two different programs! Though the promise of more structure is definitely alluring....

 

Sorry I have no signature - I guess I am not allowed to edit as I am so new? Though I've been a lurker for about a year!

Sara

[Farrar]

I totally agree with this. I often wonder if I am "getting it" when I am reading TWJ and planning a BW routine for next year. I also wonder how I can fit it all in, and then I realize if you are supplementing LA at all I don't think I can fit in all the BW components so I am working out a routine that works for us. But then I ask... Is it still BW? :lol:

I love what I am reading and am excited to get started. I wish I knew about more blogs about BW... It would be helpful to see how others make it work for them.

 

I blog about BW sometimes. This is the post I wrote about Partnership Writing (and I actually have another one, I just need to add my photos so it's just sitting there).

 

And this is a blog post from another blog I read about a week doing PW. And Creekside Learning does Brave Writer and blogs about it occasionally - here's a post about tea time from her that's pretty recent. Also, if you follow BW on Facebook, Julie Bogart links blogs with teatime photos pretty regularly, so that's a good bet to check out.

[scrapbabe]

 

 

I blog about BW sometimes. This is the post I wrote about Partnership Writing (and I actually have another one, I just need to add my photos so it's just sitting there).

 

And this is a blog post from another blog I read about a week doing PW. And Creekside Learning does Brave Writer and blogs about it occasionally - here's a post about tea time from her that's pretty recent. Also, if you follow BW on Facebook, Julie Bogart links blogs with teatime photos pretty regularly, so that's a good bet to check out.

 

I agree. The thing that has helped me the most is to read Julie's blog and the links she makes to other blogs. I also follow Julie on Facebook. I glean a lot there. Also signing up for her emails helps. She sends out daily reminders of what to do each day to live the Brave Writer lifestyle. That has helped me to find a good schedule for tea time, copy work, free write, etc. And if you really want hand holding buy Jot It Down or Partnership Writing. They lay out the philosophy a little better than TWJ does in my opinion and they have great ideas for writing projects. I think Farrar once said one of these products might be a better place to start than TWJ for some people. But as she also said everyone takes something different from TWJ and it is valuable too. :)

[Farrar]

If anyone knows more blogs, I'd love to see them. And if anyone else wants to post their routine, I'd love to see that. Although we've really been working on dictations this year, one of the things I want to do is build more around our dictations next year, so I like seeing how people weave them into their week a little more.

[jar7709]

Our BW routine is pretty loosey goosey. The biggest thing I took away from TWJ was the separation between mechanics and content/idea generation, which really helped me in figuring out why some of the curriculums we tried crashed and burned so hard, but while still being able to maintain more of a whole-language approach to grammar etc. So it's through this BW "lens" that I now adjust and supplement the other things we do, like MBtP, which I now consider sort of our core or skeleton for what we'll cover. And we have a lot of BW-y read-alouds of literature, and Tuesday poetry, but we don't really do the dictations in any regular way. I do expect we'll do a few of the Partnership Writing projects, though. BW is so flexible, I think it's sometimes more about giving you confidence to trust your gut than a specific roadmap, iykwim.

[mskelly]

She should make a forum. Maybe it would interfere with the online classes though?

 

Whatcha want to chat about? We've only been at it for a little more than a year.

 

 

 

Well....lots!

 

Last week, we started by having come up with a list of things he knows a lot about. I gave him 5-6 minutes. EVERYTHING on the list was a different kind of car. He's almost 9 and obsessed with sports cars. I even reminded him half way through that it doesn't have to be all about cars and then rattled off a few of his other hobbies. I probably wasn't actually supposed to do that, but it didn't matter because he didn't write them down anyway!

 

We followed it up with a freewrite. Again I only set the timer for 6 minutes instead of 10. He's writing-phobic and timer-phobic so I wanted to make it short and sweet. He was pretty excited when I lifted the ban on misspelled words and grammar mistakes. That was encouraging. When he was finished, we celebrated that he wrote the whole time. He was quite proud of that. We took a picture of his paper and sent it to Daddy. He ended up writing about a car race that we went to, watching cars on tv, and I think there was a sentence in there mentioning his favorite car. None of those things were on his list, not even his favorite car.

 

So, do I continue with more free writes for a while? Maybe work up to the 10 minutes. Do we continue to write about cars every day? Is this where I help him narrow the focus?

 

I have Jot it Down, Partnership Writing, and the Writer's Jungle. I just finished reading Writer's Jungle. I use Jot It Down with my younger son and plan to use PW with my car boy.

[Farrar]

Sounds like you've got a great plan in mind and are off to an awesome start. :D How old are your two?

 

When we started freewrites, my boys really enjoyed them. We did lists at one point - lists are so freeing! For awhile, we were doing the topics from the Brave Writer blog, but most of them didn't work very well for my kids. They actually liked it a lot more to get very wacky story prompts. I've been giving them more and more tangible things to use as a jump start for freewrites and that seems to work. Like, if I hand them a picture or a toy or something even then that gets them started more than, "what would you do with a million dollars" or "what's the happiest day you can remember" or things like that. My kids still look forward to their freewrite day - that and poetry tea - much more than any other thing we do for language arts.

[mskelly]

My boys are 6 and 8 (will be 9 in August).

 

I will have to check out BW blog. In the past, he has frozen with any type of prompt I have given him. Maybe making sure he knows the rules are lifted is the key to freeing his mind. That's a big part of the philosophy, right? And...in this case the timer may work in his favor. If he knows he only has to write for 5 minutes, he may feel confident enough to do that. He doesn't have to write 5 sentences or one page or whatever.

It sure does help to think through things with someone else! Thank you.

 

Hmmmm....I wonder if he'd mind if I went and woke him up to try some of these thing out. :laugh:

[Cmm]

Mskelly, he could perhaps do a number of freewrites and then pick one to revise?

 

I was using writing activities from The Writer's Jungle this year, and just got Partnership Writing. There's nothing surprisingly new in it, but I like how it's put together. I also liked that I could sit down with my daughter and show it to her. She now has a good idea of what her next year is going to look like. She went through the projects, chose the ones she liked, and decided what order she'll do them in. Then I had to wrestle the book away from her. She wants to start the projects now, but we're going to take the summer to get the lifestyle elements in place, and then start with the projects in Sept. Theoretically. Daughter is busily creating secret codes.

 

I read some Arrows, but don't use them (I have a lit degree, and my biggest problem with teaching lit is remembering to shut up :) ). Instead I take a passage from our fiction read aloud, and put it up on a whiteboard for a week. We discuss it; I put up one of the sentences for her to diagram; we use a sentence for dictation. I also (and this is not Bravewriter at all) go through her writing to see what she needs help with, and do the occasional whiteboard lesson on grammar or spelling.

 

We're going to read one MCT book (Paragraph Town TM), and do Excavating English, but otherwise this should be a very Bravewriter year. I thought of doing just parts of Bravewriter, but the more I look at it, the more it comes together into a cohesive whole.

 

I even followed the advice in the lifestyle section and got daughter a musical instrument (a recorder and the nine-note method book), and she's so excited about it. She's never expressed an interest in music before. I've never considered the connections between music and writing. But it makes so much sense when you consider poetry, reading sheet music, the rhythm and emotion in music....

[Farrar]

Not from BW specifically, but the music thing made me think of it... There's an 826 class lesson plan that has kids writing lyrics to songs that don't have lyrics. I thought that was rather clever and filed it away in my brain to use at some point.

[scrapbabe]

Not from BW specifically, but the music thing made me think of it... There's an 826 class lesson plan that has kids writing lyrics to songs that don't have lyrics. I thought that was rather clever and filed it away in my brain to use at some point.

Oh I love that! Where'd you get that idea? What's 826?

[Farrar]

 

Oh I love that! Where'd you get that idea? What's 826?

 

 

826 is Dave Eggers's nonprofit that teaches free writing classes to kids and sells pirate, zombie, and various other weird supplies. The DC branch is just down the street from us. Mushroom actually went to a spy writing class there while we were working on the secret codes Partnership Writing project - at the end, they had to all write a boring cover story of what they learned. His was pretty funny.

 

They have two books of lesson plans called Don't Forget to Write.

[Cmm]

Now daughter has moved on to designing an island. Maybe I should give her back the book?

[scrapbabe]

 

 

826 is Dave Eggers's nonprofit that teaches free writing classes to kids and sells pirate, zombie, and various other weird supplies. The DC branch is just down the street from us. Mushroom actually went to a spy writing class there while we were working on the secret codes Partnership Writing project - at the end, they had to all write a boring cover story of what they learned. His was pretty funny.

 

They have two books of lesson plans called Don't Forget to Write.

Oh thanks Farrar. I actually have that on my amazon wish list already! ;)

[justme824]

I've got a homeschool blog in the works. We use bravewriter and I'll make sure to share as soon as I have things up and running :)

[mskelly]

Ahhh, well we're going to pretend today never happened and love off the success of last week. :crying: Today, he sat there will huge tears in his eyes and just shook his head at me. I think it had more to do with the fact he was having a bad day in general and less to do with the actual writing.

 

Tomorrow is another day...

[Cmm]

Mskelly, will he narrate?

[mskelly]

Yes, he does narrate. That's all on topic and detailed. Maybe a little too detailed sometimes!

[Farrar]

My kids also get tearful about their work sometimes - writing included, even with the magic that is Brave Writer. I've had to realize that it's (usually) not about the specific subject (it helps me know this that it's rarely the same thing) but rather the alignment of the planets, the will of the gods, the atomospheric pressure, the caloric intake of breakfast, or something else unpredictable. Deep breath. New day.

[Cmm]

If it isn't just a one time glitch... my daughter struggled with freewriting at first (she came out of public school hating writing, and cried every time she wrote), so in the beginning I had her narrate her freewrites. I also modelled freewrites for her (complete with random punctuation and episodes of "I don't know what to write I don't know what to write I don't know what to write"). Make sure, if he's writing himself, that he knows that he doesn't have to show it to you if he doesn't want to.

[mskelly]

Today he wrote for 6 minutes about his trip to the car dealer. His favorite car is a Maclaren (super expensive sports car) and I promised him last year that we would take him to the dealer )2 1/2 hours away to see one if he completed a writing assignment about the car. He did...we went...it's all he's talked about since! I knew if nothing else, it would give him an actual experience to write about instead of I like the Maclaren because it is cool.

We even wrote a song about that car! He's learning to play the cello. We put words to one of the songs to help him remember the parts. The whole song was about this car.

WHATEVER works!

[Nicholas_mom]

Did you ever create a seperate place for Bravewriters?  I would be interested in joining.  I love to read what others are doing with BW.

 

I did the Keen observation exercise, which ds loved and I did one freewrite exercise, that ds also loved to do.  He wants to do them more!  But ok, what do I do with these exercises?  How do you use them?  For example, do you take a topic he likes, do a freewrite but then do you ever take a freewrite and make a perfect writtten piece?????

 

Or do you just do these exercises and just let them go?  In BW, Julie has examples for Keen Observation, she has someone's list of observations, then she her comments to the list the child made but then it jumps to a polished piece of writing.  Julie does not seem to walk you through from Keen Obs to how to write a solid piece writing.

 

Am I missing something?  Also, What is my end goal for freewriting?  How do you go from freewrite to a polished piece of writing?

 

I like the idea of showing my ds the project listed for Partnership Writing and having him pick the activities.  I will try that.  You know the project on the 5 W's?  Where can I get a clean copy of the 5 W's page for the child to work on it?  I love the page with the head on it :)

 

We are doing National Write a Novel Month, starting today.  He really enjoys writing fiction novels.

 

(Sorry for typo errors.......)

[Farrar]

I like the idea of showing my ds the project listed for Partnership Writing and having him pick the activities.  I will try that.  You know the project on the 5 W's?  Where can I get a clean copy of the 5 W's page for the child to work on it?  I love the page with the head on it :)

 

So I was just looking for this myself because we're starting that project.  I found several that look like big question marks.  There's one on this page (just scroll and scroll):

http://www.dailyteachingtools.com/free-graphic-organizers-w.html

 

Or this one:

http://freeology.com/graphicorgs/question-mark-organizer/

 

But I couldn't find a cute one like that.  Drat!

[Nicholas_mom]

Drat for me, too!  I thought you would contact Julie and have a link at your fingertips :)  But I love what you did find.  It is very useful in many ways. 

 

So, are you doing anything with your weekly freewrites or do you just do them and let it go?  It is point of the freewrite exercise just to help them get comfortable to write anything??

 

Thanks again!

[ByGrace3]

Drat for me, too! I thought you would contact Julie and have a link at your fingertips :) But I love what you did find. It is very useful in many ways.

 

So, are you doing anything with your weekly freewrites or do you just do them and let it go? It is point of the freewrite exercise just to help them get comfortable to write anything??

 

Thanks again!

If I am remembering correctly, doesn't TWJ talk about using free writes to find something that catches your child's interest and you can take it through the revision process? That is what we are doing.

 

We haven't done a lot of free writes as we are working on PW and the fairy take project from JID... But that's our plan with the occasional free write.

[Farrar]

Drat for me, too!  I thought you would contact Julie and have a link at your fingertips :)  But I love what you did find.  It is very useful in many ways. 

 

So, are you doing anything with your weekly freewrites or do you just do them and let it go?  It is point of the freewrite exercise just to help them get comfortable to write anything??

 

Thanks again!

 

Write her!  She loves to write back to people, I think.

 

We do some form of freewrites once a week nearly every week.  Like everything, occasionally one gets skipped...  But we do something usually.  Sometimes I give them something that's from TWJ, like the keen observations sort of thing.  Other times, I give them a picture prompt or a silly prompt.  They really like these prompts that I think are really dopey sometimes.  One of my boys loves to have words that he has to use.  And somehow that inspires him more than anything else (I learned this from AAS's "Writing Station").  So sometimes I give them a couple of words that they have to use and then let them loose.  I feel like the goal is just to practice getting down your own words at this stage.

 

I have not had use doing like Grace says and honing this stuff into a real piece.  That's exactly what she talks about in TWJ, but my kids have been really resistant to that, so I haven't pushed it.  When we start something and it's a "writing project" then they're much more open to having it revised and thinking about ways to change it.  But then the frustration for me is that the writing is often more dull to begin with.  Like, they write more interesting things in freewriting.  Oh well.  Eventually, the pieces will come together.  Trusting.

[Nicholas_mom]

If I am remembering correctly, doesn't TWJ talk about using free writes to find something that catches your child's interest and you can take it through the revision process?

 

 

Yes, you are correct.  So, she takes stuff out of the freewrite and does revision.  When I think of revision, I think they already wrote something once with complete sentence structure, atleast, AND then are ready to do a revision.  I thought there was a step before the revision process, but I guess I am wrong in thinking that.

 

I keep looking for the extra step and trying to make it be more complicated than it needs to be.

 

 I feel like the goal is just to practice getting down your own words at this stage.

 

 

 

Yes, I like getting clarification of what the goal is.

 

I have not had use doing like Grace says and honing this stuff into a real piece.  That's exactly what she talks about in TWJ, but my kids have been really resistant to that, so I haven't pushed it.  When we start something and it's a "writing project" then they're much more open to having it revised and thinking about ways to change it.  But then the frustration for me is that the writing is often more dull to begin with.  Like, they write more interesting things in freewriting.

 

 

This is a great example that I am looking for: WHY and HOW you are adjusting. 

 

 

Eventually, the pieces will come together.  Trusting.

 

This seems so simple but I am beginning to see how many times I come across this about teaching a subject and then trusting the process.  Thank you.

[ByGrace3]

Yes, you are correct. So, she takes stuff out of the freewrite and does revision. When I think of revision, I think they already wrote something once with complete sentence structure, atleast, AND then are ready to do a revision. I thought there was a step before the revision process, but I guess I am wrong in thinking that.

 

There can be more to do. You can take that free write and take it as is through the revision process or you can use the free write to just get a piece of the free write to expand upon into something you can revise.

 

There are lots of ways to do it :)

[Nicholas_mom]

 

There are lots of ways to do it :)

Yes, that is what I want to find out.  How are you using "specifically with your family" --- this helps to inspire me on how to do it with my ds.  I learn visually and kinecstetically and if I cannot transfer the words into a "vision" than I am lost.  Intuitively, I believe BW is right for son but I am in the process of how to make it work.  So, I am trying to figure out the next process to do with the freewrite.  Continue just doing freewrites keen obs or go to the next step.  This where I am stuck but I think I will be just doing freewrites with different topics and then where it takes me.

 

I just wanted to make sure I wasn't skipping any important steps (whatever they may be) to get to the next step in the writing process.  But it looks like you follow your child's lead on what they are ready for :)

[sunnyday]

I kind of feel like reading "Writing with Power", which Julie Bogart refers to as her huge inspiration, filled in some of these gaps for me.

 

Peter Elbow suggests freewriting as a stand-alone. It can be a content dump to rid yourself of the thoughts and emotions that are keeping you from considering your topic, it can be a warm-up to get words flowing, or it can just be private, impractical writing that never sees the light of day. A large function of freewriting, especially for the student who will have his written output for school regularly subjected to criticism and picking-apart, is to decrease the percentage of writing in a person's life that has to be weighed and measured. It's writing for yourself and noone else.

 

But on-topic freewriting-esque word dumps do feature in a few of his suggested processes for actually generating useful content. I think Julie's freewrite-and-revise is actually something like his Direct Writing process: you dump everything you have in your mind on a topic onto a page. Then you stop writing and enter revising mode. You find the decent pieces of writing and figure out what the main point is. Then you rearrange the good bits, dump the not so good bits, add transitional elements, generate an introduction, and hopefully have a workable piece of writing.

 

The Writer's Jungle details Julie's process for this in the preface to the second edition, page xx.

 

[Nicholas_mom]

 

The Writer's Jungle details Julie's process for this in the preface to the second edition, page xx.

 

Goodness gracious!  I never read the preface!  Duh, I always skip them because I think if it not important enough for inserting into chapters it's not important.  There it is "Eight week freewrite and revision."  Thank you SunnyDay :)  And thanks for the tip about peter Elbow's book.  I am off to read this and finding the book  :leaving: