D is for developing a story: Building Skills
My son had an interesting conversation with me about how to teach people to think. It included a discussion on creating a line of questions that leads to an answer or course of action. He's quite smart. However, he said this is a very challenging skill and that knowing how to develop a line of thought for a story or research article is a critical skill. Therefore, I am including a conversation on building skills that includes how to use questions to develop a story as well as other strategies. A story has to have a clear beginning, middle and end. When I have a child write a story, I also ask them to answer as many questions as they can as they write. To start with, there is a who, what, where, why, when and how to be told. Sometimes it is not told directly but clues are given as in a mystery where the reader is left to discover the answers, but most of the time we expect the answers to those questions to be upfront. It makes a difference to the interest of the reader whether the s...