Sometimes when I'm working with a student and they are needing help in organizing their thoughts and getting them written down I notice that they are wanting me to feed them word for word what to write. In order to avoid "writing" for them, I just tell them that I'm going to let them get that aspect of their paper written and I will be back to check on them. This makes them do their own writing in their own words and I'm able to avoid the whole "feed me, feed me" problem that arises from the students lack of confidence in their own writing.
What do you do to avoid the "feed me" problem?
I do that, too. I also try to avoid, if possible, getting all entangled with the lines on the page in the first place by asking questions instead ("Which of your reasons do you think is your strongest? Do you want to offer your strongest first and then the less-strong, or save the best for last? What examples do you plan to use? etc). It's amazing how much work you can get done without actually moving line-by-line through the paper.
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ReplyDeleteWhen I am working with a student in organizing their ideas, I try to stick to the big ideas and avoid the word for word trap all together. I might use the white board to write down categories into an outline, but i leave the topic sentence writing or the paragraph construction up to the student.
ReplyDeleteWhen I am helping someone with organizing their ideas for a project I am sure to stick to organizing. When they try to write out complete sentences I tend to stir them back to jotting down main points and not sentences. I remind them "right now we are just getting the outline done, you can worry about complete sentences when you sit down to write." This usually works and if it doesn't I am sure to express the YOU the second time I say it.
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