Write – The Writer's Corner

How To Use Storytelling Strategy In The Classroom As a Teacher

By thewriterscorner | March 1, 2020 | Comments 1 comment

There’s something about stories that sticks to the mind, lingering with us long after the facts have faded away. As teachers we can learn how to use storytelling strategy in the classroom, by intertwining the the lessons and skills they need to learn with a unique story.

Some teachers might wonder if it involves scheduling a separate time for storytelling or use it as fun, but there is no right or wrong method.

Here are some approaches teachers can take to include storytelling in the classroom.

For Fun, Share Your Own Stories

Depending on the class you’re teaching, you can tell them stories about when you were their age and how lessons were for you.

Share with them how many times you failed and how you got back up to succeed including the lessons you learned from such experience.

In this way you build a strong connection between you and your classroom by letting them know you can relate with them at that level.

Introduce Class Lessons With Stories

Just as we encourage students to use attention grabbing headlines when writing essays or speeches, teachers can also use storytelling to introduce lessons to the classroom.

The teacher can introduce the class lessons to the students using stories that are relevant to the topic of the day. Check out this helpful tips for teachers

Use Storytelling As Illustrations

In this instance when you find yourself trying to explain a difficult concept, one easy way out of this is to illustrate with storytelling.

Sometimes facts and figures may not be able to portray a concept, telling simple stories will make it a lot easier and relatable.

How to use Storytelling Strategy in the Classroom

Engage Reluctant Learners With Stories

Some students find it difficult connecting with school texts or some abstract concept, but when these same students are taught using stories the struggle to learn reduces.

Through storytelling learning becomes more relevant and these reluctant learners can better engage in the class lessons. Learn to inspire them.

To Achieve Learning Objectives

Just as we teach these students to develop good writing skills, we also want them to develop good listening skills.

When storytelling is incorporated into the learning objectives of the class, the outcome is superb. The students can now remain focused when learning is going on.

And most importantly, the goal of that lesson is achieved through storytelling.

There are various genres and style of storytelling which includes true life stories, true stories from news or current events, stories from history and fictional stories amongst others.

Any of the above can be incorporated into the classroom room lessons to achieve learning objectives.

How do you incorporate storytelling in the classroom? Share your ideas with us in the comments below.

5 Helpful Tips For Teachers To Help Children Overcome Challenges In Creative Writing

By thewriterscorner | February 19, 2020 | Comments 4 comments

When you get lost in your writings and start feeling the flow of words in you, you’ll agree with me that creative writing can be so much fun.

It also doesn’t negate the fact that some children are trying to overcome some challenges in creative writing.

The purpose of creative writing is to spark up a story or idea and make writing natural for children and writers. In this article I’ll share 5 helpful tips for teachers to help children overcome challenges in creative writing.

No Rules To Writing

I don’t subscribe to a set of rules when it comes to writing, so I always tell my students that can write whatever they like. All stories must not have a hook at the first paragraph or a twist at the end.

As a Teacher, whose aim is to help children overcome challenges in creative writing, you can encourage them to follow two simple rules.

First, they should be able to show, not tell what happens in a story. For example, instead of writing “the woman was angry” they could replace it with”the woman paced the floor and hissed under her breadth”.

Secondly, they should also employ the use of Wow words. In this way they’ll be giving power to verbs, for example, “John ran quickly could become John Sprinted”.

Check this out.

Story Prompts

This is probably not news but the difference is how you use this tip in helping children overcome their challenges in creative writing.

You can many writing prompts and tell a pupil to pick one at random, most importantly write along with them as they write.

You all can agree that by the time 5 minutes is up, everyone should have written up to at least 50 words, including the teacher.

But doing this exercise together, it gets the whole class writing happily and gradually it’ll get to a stage where they can be free to write on their own without occasionally checking up on them.

Short Video Clips

Some pupils think the life or Writers are glamorous, that they just sit down and have the words flow out to their pen, all of which gets to be published without much stress.

Some don’t understand the hours of editing, self promotion and rejections these writers face at times.

As a teacher, you could get video clips of writers talking about their writing, sharing the pain and rejection they’ve being through and their daily processes.

When you play this video clips of writers whose work you’re studying in class, it can help students overcome some of their own challenges in creative writing and engage more with their work.

Use Common Stories

Most of the pupils in your class would have read a particular story or watched a common movies with a storyline they wish had ended differently.

You can encourage then to pick one of those stories they remember clearly and ask them what they liked about it and what they didn’t like about it.

Then they now have the opportunity to rewrite that story in a way they like and wish it would go or end.

In this way they get to rewrite the story in their own unique and powerful way. Here’s one of the reason why writing should be taught in schools

Encourage writing from someone’s perspective

Encourage your pupils to write from someone else point of view, preferably a close friend or a classmate.

They could start by imagining waking up in this persons bed, what it’ll feel like to walk in this persons shoes, react the way this person usual does and feel as they would.

Engaging pupils in this writing exercise will challenge them to develop a real life character and also help them develop more empathy and understanding which will help they become a good creative writer.

If you’ve found this tips helpful, please share with us in the comments box your experience and other helpful tips

Do These 5 Things If You Want Your Child To Develop Great Creative Writing Skill

By thewriterscorner | February 19, 2020 | Comments 1 comment

At the Preschool level, pupils are introduced to stories through Picture books or Storytelling. It requires a child to be very imaginative so as to develop a creative writing skill.

When these stories are read aloud to them they tend to interpret the meaning of such stories more especially with pictures. It becomes easier for them to share their own stories in words. One of the reasons why writing should be taught in schools

Most times when it comes down to putting these thoughts into writing, they begin to struggle with words and making complete sentences.

Let’s look at 5 things we can do to help these children develop a creative writing skill.

Encourage Children To Speak About Their Thoughts

In this way you could start by talking to your child about the events that happened in school or during any outings with families or friends.

They’ll learn to describe events as it happened in real life and get creative when put in writing.

You could also get pictures of different events or a place, arrange them in a particular order and ask them to describe them as they see it.

Their ability to arrange these stories in a logical order will help them develop their creative writing skills when you tell them to write a story about a particular scene.

Start With 5 Words Sentences

Most time these children have so many stories and ideas to share, but might have problem putting them in writing.

Just like the first point above, children can be encouraged to share their stories verbally.

Instead of writing the whole story at once, they could write short sentences about parts of the stories, such a their favourite part of a place, their best place of fun, etc.

For example, The beach water was wide, etc.
When these children are encouraged to use drawings to put their thoughts down before writing, it also strengthen their creative writing skills.

Expose Your Children To More Storybooks And Educative Programs

Get more storybooks and read out to the children. It’ll expose them to more creative storylines and get them to imagine how these stories will end.

Children need go watch more educative programs on television and encouraged to talk more about them. They can develop any characters they imagine.

They always have fun imagining how these films will end or what will become of the bad guy. After this you can engage them into saying what they learnt and encouraging them to put those thoughts into writing.

Map Out Time For Spelling New Words

When children struggle with spelling they almost often get discouraged when it comes go writing.

Children learn new words everyday as their vocabulary expands but it should in no way discourage them from writing stories even if the happen to misspell any word.

At the preschool level they’re bound to do this a lot, you only have to show them the correct spelling and how they can be used

Developing great creative writing skills

Guide Them On The Use Of Punctuation

It’s common for these children to misplace their punctuation marks, but it would take away the fun out of writing if they’re always being pointed out.

Instead when reading storybooks with them, draw their attention to the use of full stops in every story and the use of the comma for a pause.

When writing encourage them to make short sentences and place a full stop in front of every idea the put down.

What other ways do you encourage your child to develop his/her creative writing skills?

Have you tried this methods before?
Share with us in the comment box.

NOW I’VE FINISHED WRITING A BOOK, WHATS NEXT?

By thewriterscorner | February 18, 2020 | Comments 0 Comment

After working hard, staying up late at night, waking up early to go to work, battling with Writers block and at long last, you’ve finished writing your book.

I know you’re eager for the next phase, because you’re like, “Now what?”. The fact is that when you finish writing a book, it’s only just the beginning.

In this article we’ll talk about the next thing you should do after writing a book. Click here

Give Yourself Space From Your Book

You need time to relax after writing a book and so does your book also. This is a way to help you get a better perspective of what the book is all about.

When you give your book some weeks or months to rest, you get new insights and a fresh perspective on what the book is all about and the places that needs adjustments.

Read Your Book

A second stage of getting a new perspective on your book is reading it from the beginning to the end. While doing so you’ll find yourself asking some questions.

It could be that you need to add some extra line here or there or you find some parts are not really necessary. It might be you need to rewrite some parts in a different way. Check this article.

Edit And Reconstruct Your Book

Now you’ve gotten a new perspective of where your book is, you can now start working on the second draft. This doesn’t include typo or grammatical errors but structure.

Now is when you write out new section to fill in the gap you found when reading your book. This is when you cut out parts that aren’t necessary and rewrite some lines for bettering understanding.

5 things you can do after writing your book

After this part, the overall look will look better than it did at first when you finished writing your book. Now you can publish or hire a Publishing firm to go on from there.

Read Other Books that Are Related To Your Genre

When you read other books relating to what you’ve written, you get to have an idea of what is in the market any how the titles of these books are constructed.

The Authors of these books may also tweet or blog about their book. Network with them and find out who their publisher is and see if you can get a recommendation.

GIve Your Book Out

In this part, you can give your book out to other people to read and proofread for you. They could include your friends, beta readers or an editor.

In this way you can now build a team that will take your book to it’s next level. While this is going on you can start writing another book.

This will also help take your mind off the other book in the hands of the editor. After this you can decide to self publish or give it out to as publishing firm.

A lot of people want to write a book but only a few actually finishes one. If you decide to self publish, you can enjoy the experience but if not give it to a publisher to do a great job for you.

Have you finished writing a book? How does it feel to be called an author? Share with us in the comments section.

You Want To Write A Book?: 8 Easy Ways To Find The Best Book Ideas

By thewriterscorner | January 25, 2020 | Comments 1 comment

Regardless of how good a Writer you are, coming up with with the right book idea can be challenging, mostly when looking for the best book idea.

Whether you’re a seasoned teacher, a brand new writer or a best selling author, it can be amazingly hard to find the drive needed in order to commit to writing a book.

Nevertheless, there are easy ways to find the best book ideas that can turn into a potential book or even a best seller.

As writers, we go through a lot of ups and downs as creative that makes us leave our comfort zone where we try new experiences, carrying out a number of researches on interesting topics, studying our environment and much more.

In this article, I’ve collated 8 ways you can use to find the best book idea.

Write About Someone Who Has Impacted Your Life Meaningfully

A lot of books have been written by people who share stories about their workplace.

Some talk about how they got into that industry, what it took for them to get there or the experience of daily showing up at work.

If you’ve been working at a place long enough, you could write a book about these processes and teaching people how to become an expert in that field.

Record Seminars You Give and Have Them Transcribed

Have you given talks or organized seminars to teach people about a specific subject matter? This is one of the 5 reasons you need to write a book as teacher

It could be related to your work or something you’re passionate about. You can get the recordings from these seminars and have them transcribed into words which can later be edited into your book.

This way your message can get to a wider audience especially to those who weren’t present at the seminar.

Write about answers to the most frequently asked questions you receive

Every time someone asks you a question, do well to write it down especially when it’s related to your area of expertise.

If you haven’t taken note of regular questions you get asked from friends or coworkers on a particular topic, now is a good time to start taking note.

There’s a very good chance the others out there are also asking the same questions and you writing a book on it will solve a problem.

Take an impromptu trip and write about your experience

Traveling is another way to gain new experiences especially if you’re visiting a new environment.

It might not be as often as you like, but you can write a book about a new place you’ve been to and the experiences you’ve gathered.

No matter how modest your trip is, your book can serve as a guide to someone else.

Write about your hobbies

Everyone has a hobby, something they do for fun or relaxation. Your hobby could be making pastries, knitting sweaters or even making research.

Writing a book about it gives you an opportunity to share your ideas with others who are also interested in that same hobby.

Most times you get to sell these hobby related books to readers who wants to improve on their favorite hobbies especially if it can be monetized.

Challenge yourself to do something extraordinary, then Write about the experiences

What could you do today that would be astounding a particular group of people tomorrow?

Do something you’ve never done before, push yourself our of your comfort zone. It could be travelling round the world or participating in a competition.

You could even attempt to break a world record then share those experiences as the best book idea in a book.

Open a blog and start writing about what you’re passionate about

You can create contents in your niche and write a blog post on it. It becomes a personal journal for you.

After a period of time, once you’ve built up a quality number of posts you can then repackage them all into a book.

This method allows you write your book without much pressure in a realistic period of time, check these blogging trends to follow in 2020 if you want to remain relevant

I hope this post inspires you to write a book with some of the ideas listed here. So I challenge you to go write your book now.

Are you up for the challenge?What would you be writing about?

Share with us your best book idea in the comments box below

Tag: Write