A new report from Carnegie Corporation of New York finds that writing can be a powerful driver for improving academic skills . Published by the Alliance for Excellent Education, Writing to Read: Evidence for How Writing Can Improve Reading identifies three core instructional practices that have been shown to be effective in improving student reading and comprehension.
Because writing is not subjected to standardized testing, some schools have not placed as much emphasis on writing. According to Douglas Reeves, an expert in educational standards and the author of Reason to Write, “Writing standards are now lower. More than 60% of students never write a single term paper in high school. Universities are finding that a majority of incoming freshman don’t have adequate writing skills.”
What can you do at home this summer to build your child’s writing skills? Create fun activities.
Write in daily journals
Write plays and act them out with costumes
Write letters and postcards to relatives
Start a blog
Create movies with scripts
Write and illustrate picture books
Write and submit writing pieces to sites like Stone Soup and Cyber Kids
Writing is a process. So, go through the process with your child step by step. It isn't meant to be done in one day. Make it a long term project.
- Preplanning and organizing
- Writing the draft
- Proofing (looking for errors) and rewriting
- Editing (elaborate and enhancing the content) and rewriting
- Writing the final
It should be fun. Teach them the importance of planning and editing. There will be grammar errors and spelling errors so make a game of catching them. Whoever finds the most errors wins. Have fun. Have I said have fun? If not, have fun.
To make the editing process easier to remember use the COPS mnemonic created by Regina Richards (Richards 1993, 74-79).
- Capitalization
- Organization
- Punctuation
- Spelling
If working with your child creates more stress than pleasure, then have someone else do it with them. Give a babysitter or a grandparent the ideas and the materials. Just get them writing. Write now.
4 comments:
Excellent! My kids love to write and actually, their school focuses on it a lot. As a writer, that makes me happy :)
Love this post! We've invited the boys of a friend of ours over for dinner this week. We asked them to write a short play we could perform together. It's our sneaky way of getting them to write over the summer break. They're excited about being the "directors" of our dinner theater. I'll let you know how it goes...
I'd love to hear about the play! You should film them and then they can see themselves.
The journals never really took until this year, and now they're writing in them like mad. I think you just have to keep at it, keep trying. All my boys were reluctant writers, but we're overcoming it. :)
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