Trying a New Writing Strategy

           Because I am not teaching, I needed to find a child on whom to try a new writing strategy.  It just so happened that I had five children staying with me last week, so I chose the 6 year old who is in first grade as my student. I will use Max as his pseudonym.
           I chose to try shared writing with Max because he seems to have missed much of the important basics of writing as well as how to even write words and put letters in alphabetical order. 
           The first thing that I did was work through the alphabet with him using some foam letters I have.  He worked hard to put the letters in the correct order though he did need some help with this task.  After we worked through the alphabet we moved on to spelling some words with the letters.  He was able to spell the words: put, box, run, and top on his own. After playing with the letters, we moved on to the shared writing portion of my time with him.  I got out a small dry erase board and dry erase markers.  I asked Max what he would like to write about and he said, "my new baby brother".  I thought this was a good topic to use for writing because it was personal and interesting for the student.  So we brainstormed a list of words that made him think of his baby brother.  Some of the words included: bottles, baby, milk, crying, diapers, and mommy.  I took out another small dry erase board and we began the actual shared writing.  He told me what he would like the story to say and I wrote it down on the board emphasizing my use of punctuation and sentence formation.  He used the words from the other board to remind himself of what he wanted to say.  The process took a lot of prompting on my part, but I think he learned more about how sentences look and how they can tell a story.
     I learned from this process that when you take your time and give personal attention to one student they can learn a lot in a very short period of time.  I enjoyed working with Max because I was able to help him express himself in writing.  I see Max on a pretty regular basis and I think that I will try shared writing with him again very soon.  I would like to see him be able to form more words on his own, to form his own sentences and eventually a paragraph.