What Should I Write About? Write About This!

To some kids, a blank page is an exciting opportunity. They love the freedom of a wide-open writing assignment. They’re eager to let their imaginations run wild and seem to overflow with ideas before the tip of their pencil even hits the paper.

For other kids, nothing could be more intimidating than facing a blank page. For them, a writing assignment without parameters is a nightmare. Their minds seem to freeze. They wrinkle their foreheads and look desperately around the room for inspiration. If only someone would give them just the smallest shred of an idea…

A fourth grade teacher named Brad has a great solution. Brad noticed that his students loved to make up stories and poems based on photographs, and so he developed an app called Write About This to make inspiration easy for any elementary school child with access to an iDevice. Write About This is home to hundreds of interesting, idea-sparking photographs arranged by curriculum, season, and theme. Adults can choose whether kids see just the picture for an open-ended response, or whether a prompt is displayed (the level of complexity is customizable) along with the picture. For example, an image of a bike entirely covered with mud has prompts like “What is the messiest you've ever been? Tell about where you were and how you felt” and “How would you explain this to your parents without getting in trouble?”

The app is a handy source of inspiration, and a single image can be shown to a small group or a whole classroom full of students with paper and pencils. But it becomes even more valuable if individual kids can get their hands on the iPad with the app. This way, they can type their writing directly into the app, record their voices as they read it aloud, and publish it with a single click. And students and teachers can import their own pictures and prompts – as written phrases or recorded audio messages – into the app, making it almost endlessly adaptable.

Write About This is a simple idea with powerful possibilities. It is available through the iTunes store.

Watch a video about Write About This below:

Long-Term Changes in How Children Play

A review of 14 studies of elementary school students, looking at close to 900 children over a period of 23 years, has found that children are significantly more imaginative in their play than they were at the inception of the study period. The research team, headed by Dr. Sandra Russ of Case Western Reserve University, had expected to find lessened creativity in light of studies that have shown that children have less time for unstructured play (up to 8 hours less a week, according to some studies) than they did in the 1980's. 

As reported in Education Week, Dr. Russ noted, “We knew from talking with children that they didn’t play with toys as much as they used to. So we were surprised by the finding, and we think it’s important.” Dr. Russ went on to note that children who are more imaginative in their play tend to have better coping skills, creativity, and problem solving skills than children who are less imaginative. 

Play is an important part of the cognitive and emotional development of young children, and there has been concern from pediatricians and others at the lack of play time available to children, particularly those who live in poverty. These findings that children are using their limited playtime in more creative ways could potentially lessen concerns about reduced opportunities for childhood play. 

There was one area of concern raised by the study, however: over the years, the children in the study  showed less negative emotion during their playtime. The researchers cautioned that while this might seem to be a positive finding, it actually meant that the children were less likely to use play as a way to work through negative feelings and experiences and that could be harmful to their long-term well-being.

Photo by Gustty via Flickr Creative Commons