How Parents Can Help Students Improve Their Writing

Encouraging Your Student

 to Write – A Few Suggestions to Consider

[#1 and #2 are adapted from Bernice E. Cullinan in Read To Me: Raising Kids Who Love to Read]

1. Help your child become aware that there are many uses for writing.  Writing surrounds us in the form of advertising, packaging, instructions for new appliances or other equipment, bills, parking signs, T.V. shows, comedians’ routines, movie dialogue, and so on and so on.

2.  Encourage your child to keep a journal. Journal writing is not only good writing practice; it also creates a record of events and feelings that might not otherwise be remembered, and it can be a way to clarify and deal with thoughts and emotions.

3.  Pull out the baby book or journal if you recorded anecdotes from when this child was younger.  This could show the value of recording memories, and might provide ideas your child could write about. 

4.  Write notes to your child – hopefully some encouraging, appreciative ones as well as the “don’t forget to do this” ones.

5.  My own children and I had a positive experience when they each kept a journal that was meant for me to read and respond to.  I’d read them at least once a week and write back to them on the same page.  

4. Be willing to help your child come up with ideas for writing, revise early drafts of a piece, and edit later drafts.      Please don’t do the writing or editing for your child, though you could pick out an error or weakness or two in a piece and explain why it’s a problem and how it could be fixed. 

   Become familiar with the Six Trait Rubrics often used to assess writing.  Remember to focus on the first five traits before you worry too much about conventions. It’s very frustrating to carefully check spelling and punctuation in a paragraph that you end up throwing out as you revise your ideas.  

    Be positive.  Be happily amazed at the unique way your child thinks and writes.  Give lots more of  encouragement than of criticism.

   All writers can use more than one reader who can respond to our work in an encouraging way, and help us see where it is strong and where it could use some more effort. 

5.  If your child isn’t already comfortable with using computers,  help him or her schedule a keyboarding class at school or take advantage of other computer-use training.

6.  Set the example.  Write. 





Published multiple times in previous years.