Bay Area Writing Camps for Kids
Our
Students
Jerome loves to write.
He's a never-ending source of stories and his teachers never have to prompt him to keep going. He talks excitedly about all the ideas he has to anyone who will listen. His rich imagination is populated with heroes and villains, dramatic rescues and thrilling mysteries.
Jerome's enthusiasm for writing means he receives less support and attention in school. However, a closer look shows that his journal is filled with run-on sentences and poor punctuation. He starts many stories but rarely finishes them. His narrative writing misses most of the details he has when he tells stories aloud. Without any structural guidance, Jerome's factual writing and stories often wander, and action seems to errupt from nowhere in the latter. Teachers comment that his writing, while good, doesn't respond to the writing prompts he is given.
Lila hates to write.
Whenever a writing assignment comes up, Lila sweetly offers to do her reading homework first. Then she suggests that she's been having trouble with math and could really use help on that. She stretches out the time it takes to do her other homework, taking bathroom and snack breaks, until dinner time. She promises to work hard on her writing...tomorrow.
When Lila finally does get to her writing, she frequently skips steps. She insists that she already knows what she wants to write and doesn't want to "waste time" brainstorming or outlining. As a result, Lila writes the bare minimum her teachers will accept. She often panics partway through an assignment and spends a bunch of time stuck, trying to figure out how to make it longer. Her spelling is poor but because she waits until the last minute to write, she doesn't have time to edit.