Territories and Choosing a Topic

Mrs. Whelan shared some examples of Writing Territories and some more examples of Writing Territories on her blog! The next stop is to choose one of your territories and then narrow down that territory to one single moment or experience. You are going from a really big idea to a very specific idea that you will write about.

One of my Writing Territories is that I work with students who are deaf and hard of hearing. This year I have focused on trying to help students own their hearing loss and to really advocate for themselves. I believe it is important for students who are deaf and hard of hearing to meet other students who also have a hearing loss. In the fall I organized a author chat with Tom Angleberger through Skype and the kids got to learn about him and his books and also to meet each other. I'm hoping to do this again in May. I decided I would like to write about what it might be like to be a student who is hard of hearing and how that student might feel insecure about wearing hearing aids.

My Writing Territory is "Kids deaf/hh". Under that, I made the idea more specific and wrote that I want to talk about an "event to socialize". The point of this would be "meeting other kids". Finally, I awnt to talk about how a student was uncomfortable wearing her hearing aids and how it was important for her to see how it's okay to wear hearing aids.

I have already done some free writing about this topic. I wrote about how I think I would feel if I was in this students' shoes. Your task is to choose a Writing Territory, and then draw in inverted pyramid and narrow down your topic so you have just one specific topic to write about. Then go ahead and take 10-15 minutes to write and get your ideas down on paper. Really try to be descriptive about your topic. Try to freeze one moment in time and explain everything you can about what is happening. This is a technique that authors use. I call it Exploding A Moment. For an example of this you can read pages 27-28 in Gary Schmidt's book Okay For Now to see how he describes the first the main character, Doug, sees one of Audubon's drawings of a bird. He uses various literary devices to really show the reader what the character is experiencing.

Sometimes it helps me to think about exactly why I am writing so you might want to do that. I am going to share my writing with other hearing itinerant teachers in the district as part of an invitation for them to help support me as I plan my May activity where kids can get together and meet each other. Head over to Mrs. Whelan's Hearing News Blog to see what other students chose to write about!