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.
