Heart Map

Today we continued to work on the idea of where do authors get their ideas. Coming up with an idea can be the toughest thing to do when you sit down and write. I know some nights I start and restart and then restart when I am writing this blog. The main reason...I do not know what I want to write. The more we can help the authors in our room find ideas the more they will write.

The trick we tried today to help find ideas was a heart map. A heart map is just a giant heart that we cut out and paste into our writer's notebook. Then we filled the heart with all the things we care about deeply.  In the front of the room Ms. Cavallaro and myself modeled what we would put on our heart map. In the center of my heart I put my children and my wife.  I started to add other members of my family to the map. As the class saw the things that we were adding to our maps, they started to add ideas to their maps.  We would stop from time to time and students would share what they were putting on their map. Their ideas would lead to more ideas on our map and the lesson went on and on as we all filled out hearts with people, places, memories, and so much more.

Why spend all this class time on this lesson. We want students to realize that they can look back at their heart map or the other lessons that we have been working on over these first few days of school to find an idea. I always love stopping by for a conference and a student tells me they do not know what to write. We just turn back to one of the many pages we have that are filled with ideas and we pick one. I leave and off they can go.

Another reason for all of this time, I want students to realize that we want them to write about things that they care about or love or that they just have to share. When students are picking topics that excite them or that they are passionate about, you can see it in the work. The writing is stronger. The willingness to share is always higher. Everything just works better when they are excited about their idea.

When the students were done working on their heart maps, we had them pick one idea to expand. My homeroom got time to write and share their writing from today.  The writing was amazing. If you notice someone at home struggling to find a writing topic, try our trick. Flip back and find the heart map. Have them pick one idea and send them off to write.

Finding a topic is so tough but hopefully all year long we can show our young authors all the possibilities that they have.

Hope you are having a great week.