Often students do not feel comfortable writing because they feel they have nothing to write about. I know this because that was me as a child. It is truly hard to come up with something off the top of your head, and somehow can be limiting when you are told exactly what to write about. So, to solve this problem, there are many different exercises that can help students brainstorm. All kids, no matter the age really love story telling. One activity that has even helped spark my own ideas is simply have cards around the room with labels such as "sibling story", "pet story", "best vacation story", "story that involves an injury", etc. and then allow students to walk to the table of their choice and just tell stories to their peers. This is allow students to perfect their story telling, stark new ideas from their peers stories and get them excited about their stories. This can later be transformed into students being able to write about their lives. Another activity having students list 100 things they love, this can be in a list form or boxes, etc. Another is to have a starting word and make a memory chain that allows children to write everything they think of when hearing that word and just write anything that comes to mind. That student can then pick one of their favorite things they chose and write about that memory. Another example is giving a child a picture from a magazine and asking them to write all about what they think is happening in that picture. Another idea is to incorporate maps to spark ideas; this can mean having a map of the school or town and have students write about a certain story that happened at that location. Students could also write a heart map which is drawing a heart and have the student fill what is in their heart. There are other modifications of this activity, like having a treasure box and have all their treasures inside, etc. Most these ideas about beginning writing can be found in Mentor Text  teaching Writing Through Children’s Literature (2nd edition) by: Lynne R. Dorfman & Rose Cappelli. Other examples to spark writing is seeing writing in different forms than students are used to. This can be seen in the book Textbook: Not exactly a memoir by Amy Krouse Rosenthal. She writes in lists, charts, pictures, maps and a lot of her writing is very meaningful but short. Students need to see writing in these forms as well. ​

 

​

​

 

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

 Even when given all these helpful starters students can still have a really negative feeling towards writing. I think those fears come from simply not seeing much writing, (especially expressive writing within the classroom), or when they are told to write there is this huge amount of pressure. "Is what I have written long enough?" "Who will be reading this?" I know I had these thoughts in my head as a child and I still struggle with them now. It seems when I know my writing will be "graded" I get completely freaked out. Looking back on writing within my own school setting there was really not a lot of modeling. It seemed that all my teachers showed their own writing completely finished. This did not give me much help at all because I was unable to see how the teacher got there. It seemed the feedback I got was a lot of editing and how to make my story sound better (which really meant my teacher telling me exactly what to do). What teachers should be doing is showing writing in real time. Students should see their teacher doing the writing process with them, and letting them see their thought process and most importantly seeing their mistakes. It will show students that even teachers make mistakes and it shows a love for writing. Students can have other supports (especially when learning a specific writing skill) like mentor texts. Have students read a certain book as a class, talk about their writing skills and ask students to model it. Some students will think this is cheating but explain to children that they are only learning. A great way to look at this is someone helped you ride a bike and you did so by doing what another person did until you learned that skill as well.