The key to make this game more effective is to have children write as long a sentence as possible.
When we did this game in a different area before, those children worked as hard as they could, and a few of them even wrote beautiful poetic sentences that we didn't expect. But on the other hand, being not used to it, there were many children who ended up with "I saw a blue Mt. Kirirom,” with “blue” and “Mt. Kirirom” for example.
We want them to imagine a lot and practice writing, so we will instruct them to make as long a sentence as possible. Just adding “yesterday” to the sentence I saw a blue Mt. Kirirom will make it longer. It will be even longer if they add “yesterday with friends.” It may be confusing for children if we just demand, “make your sentence long!” but they may be able to enjoy the game if just adding.
We will give these concrete explanations to the children first. Through our activities so far, I have once again felt that examples are important. Examples…, detail examples to some extent, give children hints to think. Some children copy our example as it is into their essays, but their essays would have been more limited without our examples. I think those children, while accumulating such experiences, will be able to think for themselves gradually even if there is no example.
I also want to tell them in advance that "blue" and "mountain" do not necessarily have to be "blue mountain.” We can say “there was a blue frog when I entered the mountain,” or “It was a sunny day and the sky was blue” and so on. This will make the content of the game fairly clear. By the way, we didn't actually put any color in the word group!
Comments