Helping Children Brainstorm Ideas: Breaking the Mental Block
by
Douglas Haddad 
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Brainstorming is an important, yet often overlooked, skill that is useful for good writing. Many students feel at a loss about how to get their thoughts down on paper and consequently become discouraged with the writing process. With brainstorming techniques, students will be able to effectively communicate their thoughts on paper and be more organized for all types of formal writing.
Children with learning disabilities often find brainstorming to be an intimidating task. Brainstorming involves students to create ideas by utilizing prior knowledge, which many may not possess, and making inferences. In turn, this may cause a child to become highly anxious and result in shutting down from an activity or becoming overly frustrated and unproductive in the writing assignment.
Introduce Brainstorming as a Class Activity
Students with LD benefit when they are provided with a structure to complete a task. Independent brainstorming demands more abstract and critical thinking skills to be applied by a child. This may be an unrealistic starting expectation for a child with LD. Instead, a teacher can introduce this skill as a class brainstorming activity. Having students work in groups and adding their ideas to the board not only provides a visual representation of thoughts, but also allows for children to share and express their thoughts orally.
A teacher can assign each group a concept that children have some degree of familiarity and experience with. Within each group, one student can be in charge of writing all the brainstorming ideas down on paper. A teacher can provide each group with a graphic organizer, such as a mind map, to color-code similar ideas into categories. Each group can make connections by linking lines from one related idea to the next so the big picture becomes seen
Source: Verywellfamily.com
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