Jun 04 2007

Writing invitation – what’s in a name?

Instead of writing prompts, exercises, or assignments, Lisa Garrigues uses the phrase "writing invitiations" in her book Writing Motherhood. I’m borrowing her terminology since we’re doing summer vacation writing – I hope we’ll be "inviting" children to write rather than forcing them to.

I’m also stealing another of her ideas – writing about names (Chapter 6 for those of you who are reading Writing Motherhood). After all, what is the first thing a child does on a worksheet, test or writing assignment but write their name?

Writing Invitation One: Names Write about your name. How did your parents come to choose that name? Do you like it? Would you want to change your name? If so, what would it be? Writing Invitation Two: Nicknames Make a list of all the nicknames you’ve been called – both the ones you hated and the ones you liked. Who gave you that nickname? Which ones expose the truth about you?

Note to parents: Please have your child date and title the page with subject of the writing invitation.

As to writing length, I’ll let you decide what your child can handle. The amount of time or pages should be determined by the child’s age, writing ability and attention span. For younger children, one or two pages or five to 10 minutes may work. For older children, you may want to make it more challenging (more pages or time) or keep the assignment open ended and let them determine how many pages they’d like to write that day.

Keep me updated on your progress in the comments below.

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2 responses so far

2 Responses to “Writing invitation – what’s in a name?”

1. # Christinaon 04 Jun 2007 at 12:36 pm

   Thank you so much for starting this project! This is also a great exercise for kids to learn how to interview people. I hope my daughters get as excited about this as I am!

2. # Deborah Dowdon 04 Jun 2007 at 6:57 pm

   Just like sharing any experience can bring families closer, this can be a great way to start dialogue. A good way to start mght be sharing our own experiences with our children. My mom and dad named me after Debbie Reynolds who was a famous actress at the time (50′s). As a young person I was not happy with my name, but now, it is okay with me. Since I have really red hair, I was called “Carrot Top” and because I was very lanky growing up, people called me “skinny McKinney”. Funny how what was so hurtful then does not bother me at all now- I love my red hair… and I wish for the day when someone would call me skinny again!