Excerpt from Mentoring young Writers – Chapter 4

By Blanche Lamont

Possibilities for Short Writing practices

The ideas listed below will be useful for generating topic ideas and formats. Many of these books have a repeated pattern or structure to imitate, and the subsequent pages of this chapter provide ideas for working with some of them. In addition, ideas for some of the books listed below are included in Chapter 2.

Writing Ideas / Book Titles (see pgs. 89 - 89 for authors)
-Persona poem - I am…or If I Were….
-What a wonderful day to be a …
-Who is the world for?
-Somewhere in the world right now…
-Summer is… The mountain is…
-Imagine…
-A prayer from …
-I see… I hear…
-______, of what do you dream?
-I give thanks for …, Thank you for…
-Speaking to…
-A ______helps to make the world…
-No one but you can ….. / -Water Dance, Desert Voices, Voices of the Wild, The Tree,Buttercup’s Lovely Day, Falcon
- What a Wonderful Day to be a Cow
-Who is the World For?
-Somewhere in the World Right Now
-The Ocean Is, Winter Is
-Imagine
-Barnyard Prayers
-HelloOcean, Windsongs and Rainbows
-What do You Dream?
-Giving Thanks, The Secret of Saying Thanks
-Sun Song, What Do You Dream?, Giving Thanks, Butterfly Eyes and Other Secrets of the Meadow
-Making the World
-No One But You

Students might choose to create an anthology of their short poetic pieces or imitate the structure of a book to create a longer poetic picture book. While many of the shared writing examples provided in this chapter illustrate personification, similes, or rhythm, it’s not necessary for students to include these in their pieces. Simply focusing on strong verbs and details will provide valuable practice in crafting writing.

If your students are writing poetic prose remind them to organize their pages like the example below (refer to pgs. 30 - 31). They should copy the skeleton version because this will reinforce the difference between that version and their elaborated versions. For the Planning column, students will select phrases and verbs from the brainstorming list generated with the whole class.

Skeleton: I am Tiger. I hunt for food and pounce on my prey. / Planning
(students write their elaborated versions here) / (students choose verbs from class list or generate their own)