Help Your Child
Learn to Write Well
Should you help your child with writing? Yes, if you want your child to:
·
Do well in
school
·
Enjoy
self-expression
·
Become more
self-reliant
You know how
important writing will be to your child's life. It will be important from first-grade
through college and throughout adulthood. Writing is:
Practical - Most of us make
lists, jot down reminders, and write notes and instructions at least occasionally.
Job-Related - Professional and
white-collar workers write frequently– preparing memos, letters, briefing papers,
sales reports, articles, research reports, proposals, and the like. Most workers do
"some" writing on the job.
Stimulating - Writing helps to
provoke thoughts and to organize them logically and concisely.
Social - Most of us write
thank-you notes and letters to friends at least now and then.
Therapeutic - It can be helpful
to express feelings in writing that cannot be expressed so easily by speaking.
Writing is more
than putting words on paper. It's a final stage in the complex process of communicating
that begins with "thinking." Writing is an especially important stage in
communication, the intent being to leave no room for doubt. Has any country ratified a
verbal treaty? Writing well requires:
·
Clear thinking -
Sometimes the child needs to have his memory
refreshed about a past event in order to write about it.
·
Sufficient time
- Children may have "stories in their
heads" but need time to think them through and write them down. School class periods
are often not long enough.
·
Reading - Reading can
stimulate a child to write about his own family or school life. If your child reads good
books, he will be a better writer.
·
Interest - All the time in the world won't help if there is
nothing to write, nothing to say. Some of the reasons for writing include: sending
messages, keeping records, expressing feelings, or relaying information.
·
Practice - Practice, and more practice.
·
Revising - Students need
experience in revising their work – i.e,
seeing what they can do to make it clearer, more descriptive, more concise, etc.
OK, You Want To
Help? Here's What You Can Do
Allow time
– Help your child
spend time thinking about a writing project or exercise. Good writers do a great deal of
thinking. Your child may dawdle, sharpen a pencil, get papers ready, or look up the
spelling of a word. Be patient, your child may be thinking.
Respond – Do respond to
the ideas your child expresses verbally or in writing. Make it clear that you are
interested in the true function of writing which is to convey ideas. This means focusing
on "what" the child has written, not "how" it was written. It's
usually wise to ignore minor errors, particularly at the stage when your child is just
getting ideas together.
Resist the
temptation to write it yourself! – Don't write a
paper for your child that will be turned in as his work. It is fine to point mistakes in
spelling, punctuation, or grammar (what we call editing), but do not tell
your child what to write. Encourage him to do his own revising: adding
details, using stronger vocabulary, making the meaning more clear. Learning how to revise
your own work, meeting a writing deadline, taking responsibility for the finished product,
and feeling ownership of it are important parts of writing well.
Ask Questions
– Become a
sounding board for your child. Let him read the piece aloud
and you can ask questions about the ideas and details. Your questions can prompt
him to revise his piece for meaning and clarity. Again, feel free to suggest places in the
piece where more details could be added, but do not tell him what to write.
Praise – Take a positive
approach and say something good about your child's writing. Is it accurate? Descriptive?
Thoughtful? Interesting? Does it say something? Do you notice improvement over previous
pieces?
Other Ways to
Encourage Writing
Make it real
– Your child needs
to do real writing. It's more important for the child to write a letter to a relative than
it is to write a one-line note on a greeting card. Encourage the child to write to
relatives and friends. Perhaps your child would enjoy corresponding with a pen pal.
Suggest
note-taking – Encourage your
child to take notes on trips or outings and to describe what (s)he saw. This could include
a description of nature walks, a boat ride, a car trip, or other events that lend
themselves to note-taking.
Brainstorm
– Talk with your
child as much as possible about his/her impressions and encourage the child to describe
people and events to you. If the child's description is especially accurate and colorful,
say so.
Encourage
keeping a journal – This is excellent
writing practice as well as a good outlet for venting feelings. Encourage your child to
write about things that happen at home and school, about people (s)he likes or dislikes
and why, things to remember or things the child wants to do. Especially encourage your
child to write about personal feelings– pleasures as well as disappointments. If the
child wants to share the journal with you, read the entries and discuss them–
especially the child's ideas and perceptions.
Write together
– Have your child help you with letters, even such
routine ones as ordering items from an advertisement or writing to a business firm. This
helps the child to see firsthand that writing is important to adults and truly useful.
Use games – There are numerous games and puzzles that help a
child to increase vocabulary and make the child more fluent in speaking and writing.
Remember, building a vocabulary builds confidence. Try crossword puzzles, word games,
anagrams and cryptograms designed especially for children. Flash cards are good, too, and
they're easy to make at home.
Suggest making
lists – Most children like to make lists just as they like
to count. Encourage this. Making lists is good practice and helps a child to become more
organized. Boys and girls might make lists of their records, tapes, baseball cards, dolls,
furniture in a room, etc. They could include items they want. It's also good practice to
make lists of things to do, schoolwork, dates for tests, social events, and other
reminders.
Encourage
copying – If a child likes a particular song, suggest
learning the words by writing them down– replaying the song on your stereo/tape
player or jotting down the words whenever the song is played on a radio program. Also
encourage copying favorite poems or quotations from books and plays.
Help
Your Child Respond to Literature
Should you help
your child with reading responses? Yes, if you want your child to:
·
Do well in
school
·
Learn from what
is being read
·
Become a
critical reader and thinker
Children
are challenged to respond to a literature passage with questions related to it.
Initial questions may be of a factual nature, but the "best" questions are more
difficult and will require higher-order thinking skills such as: inference, deduction, analysis, synthesis, and
evaluation skills.
Please
offer guidance to your child to:
·
read
through any assigned questions first, then read through the passage looking for the
relevant information needed to answer the questions
·
Use
post-it notes to mark passages or take notes on paper that can later be used to help
answer the questions
·
answer
the questions in complete and detailed sentences
·
justify
their reasons by referring to the passage and the information given, known behaviour or
characteristics of a character, setting of the passage etc. (eg. "I know that
Theseus was brave because it says he volunteered to go to Crete even though he knew people
didn't come back. Another evidence of his bravery was when …"). It is a
very important skill that children can give reasons and support for their
answers, decisions, and opinions
·
form
a personal involvement with the question by drawing a conclusion, making a generalization,
or recognizing a connection between the book and real-life experiences or prior knowledge
If
needed, you may wish to:
·
work
with your child. Sharing the reading of the passage enables you to display to your
child the intonation and expression of the passage.
·
discuss
the questions with your child and what information the questions are asking for.
Discussing what particular sentences are implying may also be a helpful strategy.
·
suggest
your child read the passage a second time to confirm his responses and to look for further
evidence to support his answers
Please
don’t:
·
tell
your child the answers. Discuss the work with them but allow the child's decision on
the answer to be the one written down. It is important that the teacher can assess
the child's answers so they can provide the most suitable follow-up work to ensure your
child makes good progress. Providing work suitable for your improvement
because it's your homework answers the teacher has read will not help your child.
But
mostly:
·
encourage
your child to devote time and concentrated effort to both the reading of the passage and
the writing of the response. A hurried literature response will lack the critical thought
necessary to practice these higher-order thinking skills we hope to develop in your child.