9 Year Old Boys Who Hate Writing: A Lego Hack
Do you have a 9 year old boy who hates writing so much it brings him to tears? I did, and had no idea what to do with him! He didn't have a learning disability, and he wasn't generally opposed to school, but . . . man, oh man, did that kid hate writing!
So after "divorcing" the handwriting component (which we minimized and practice separately) from the composition component, we brainstormed together for a hack that would spark his interest in written communication. The idea worked, and it has since worked with several other kids in that 9-12 year old range . . . your own mileage may vary, as they say, but in case this hack works for you & yours, here's how we did it.
Step 1: Choose something your child loves to do (in our case it was Lego), and explain that you and your child together are going to try an experiment to see if you can make writing easier / better / more fun for him . . . you're going to actually publish a book! In our case, he was required to finish the 1st project, but not to do any subsequent projects like this one if he deemed it "not cool."
Step 2: Break the writing process into very small segments, and assign each step to a day. We were working with a typical week-long structure at the time, and here's how we broke it up.
MONDAY: Kid builds a "super-awesome Lego thing" during writing time, and . . . he's done for the day. (Yes, you can milk this for all it's worth! It's definitely more fun than laboring at the table with a pencil and paper!)
TUESDAY: Mom photographs the "super-awesome Lego thing" and asks 3-4 questions to get the brain juices going for when Kid describes the thing in tomorrow's session.
WEDNESDAY: At the computer, Mom imports the photos to a Shutterfly project, and invites Kid to stand nearby while she works on captions. Skip the first page, and make a 2-page spread.
KEY: Lean on him for his own wording / photo and caption choices, but if he's stuck (or suspicious!), feel free to suggest and help, especially on this first one. You can back off as the project progresses.
KEY: Let Kid decide if this is going to be a narrative paragraph (he can link the paragraphs together, but this is a higher form of writing, so don't push!). He could also write process paragraphs - "first I built ____, and then I had the idea for ______." And it's ok to mix and match between pages, too!
THURSDAY: On Thursday, the goal is to co-write a paragraph about 1 of the photos. Don't overthink this, and yes, it's fine for Mom to do the typing - the goal is to get the paragraph done, and for both of you to still have fun.
FRIDAY: On Friday, your mission is to do any final edits, and to see if your paragraph from yesterday makes sense. If you have time & ability, make sure the 1st sentence is a solid topic sentence. Then, SAVE your work (this should be pages 2-3 of your book), and enjoy the weekend!
At the end of 9 weeks, you'll have 9 paragraphs written, and it's time to make a cool cover page and back page. Don't forget a fun "About the Author" note if you like!
