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4.Top 10 Tips for Teaching Writing
Writing provides an opportunity for us to communicate with people we may never meet face to face. Helping children become effective writers will equip them to share their ideas and their feelings—and perhaps even influence others.
However, many people—adults and children alike—find writing to be a stressful challenge. Writing instruction can loom as an even more daunting task.
Writing can be distressing because it is an extremely complex process in which people must tend to many tasks simultaneously: form an idea, put the idea into words, spell the words correctly, capitalize and punctuate appropriately, and shape letters (or find them on a keyboard). In addition, while working on one sentence, the mind is probably racing ahead to consider the next one!
The following tips for writing instruction apply to writers of all ages and abilities. Most of the tips relate directly to the writing process.
1. From the time your children are toddlers—or even before—show them that you value communication. Listen attentively when they talk to you. Expect them to listen attentively when you talk to them. When you are communicating something important, be sure you have eye contact with them. Be sure you are looking at them, and be sure they are looking at you. Your children's perception of your attitude toward communication will carry over from listening and speaking to reading and writing.
2. Do some writing yourself. This serves a dual purpose. First, it provides experience with the writing process so that you can be a more effective guide for your children. Second, it gives you the opportunity to model writing. If your children see you write for a variety of purposes, they will understand that you value writing, and they will begin to identify situations in which writing will work for them as well.
3. Expose children to a variety of genres—stories, poems, non-fiction articles, essays, plays, etc.—both for reading and for writing. Read to your children, and read with your children—even when they are able to read independently.
Reading provides excellent preparation for writing. Sometimes a piece that has been read serves as a direct model for writing. Other times the influence is subtler. All aspects of material read—content, structure, sentence patterns, imagery, sound—remain in the storehouse of the mind, often below consciousness but available for use, perhaps in a composition.
4. Help children think of—and keep track of—their ideas for writing. Thinking of something to write about often becomes a writer's first difficulty. Writers can bypass this obstacle if they capture ideas when they occur instead of waiting until ideas are needed. When something sparks your child's interest, you might say, "You might want to write about that sometime."
5. Help children find an audience for their writing. Writing is more meaningful when it is genuine communication rather than a mere exercise. There are many opportunities for children to share their writing with their family and their community. They can write letters, stories for younger children, contest entries. They might write some pieces on special paper, enhance them with a drawing or photograph, and/or frame them or bind them into a book. Such treatments show high regard for the work and invite a larger audience.
6. Provide opportunities for children to get feedback throughout the writing process. Professional writers regularly consult others, yet adults often make the writing task more difficult for children by requiring them to "do it all themselves." The flow chart below shows four points at which a writer would benefit from feedback. The "responder" in a writing conference could be a parent or teacher, a sibling, a peer. Writers should learn to select people who would be most helpful in specific situations.
7. Free children to write their first draft without worrying about correctness of anything—spelling, capitalization, punctuation, sentence structure, vocabulary. They should write their first draft very quickly, and that draft can be very rough. The important thing is to unleash the flow of ideas. Some writers find it helpful to dictate their first draft.
8. Help children succeed with editing. After the content of a composition is established, a writer's focus turns to editing (making mechanical corrections, such as capitalization, punctuation, and spelling). Have realistic expectations. Hold young children responsible for applying basic rules they have studied, such as capitalizing the first word of a sentence and using appropriate end punctuation. Add new responsibilities as children learn new concepts.
9. Respond to children's writing as a reader before you respond as a teacher or critic. Respond to the content of a composition so that writers know their message was received. For example, if the writer has described his or her grandmother's kitchen, you might say something like "I can tell that Nana's kitchen is a very special place to you."
10. Make writing enjoyable for both you and your children. Children are more likely to enjoy writing when they understand the value of communication and can share ideas they care about. They are more likely to enjoy writing when frustration is minimized.
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