Sunday, August 26, 2012

How to increase writing skills in children

A rich language environment is the foundation for good writing. Encourage your child to play games and participate in activities that build vocabulary and increase the range of words your child will know to write with depth. Word games can be fun for your child and make learning playful. 

Make sure you check your child’s homework for spelling and punctuation errors which will reinforce the skills your child is learning. If your child is preparing a project report, ensure that you check the first draft before she takes it to school. Then mark the spelling, capitalization, punctuation errors for your child to correct it themselves. 

The most important thing is to encourage writing is to read good books. Make sure you buy plenty of books according to your child’s age so that he or she understands the use of words by different authors, the descriptions and humor to make a point. 

Writing is a skill to be developed, not something which you have or don’t have. Always remind your children that writing is power, he or she has things worth saying and those ideas deserve to be well expressed on paper. Once they are encouraged, they will be more open to improve. You should ask your child how they feel about writing and if they have any negative thoughts, then you should try and solve whatever problems they have. 

Ask your kids to first think about the topic they are asked to write. Gather information in their mind about it, try to structure it and then go about writing it in a systematic manner. Many kids don’t take few minutes to think over it and they just want to start writing and finish it faster. The result is a poorly structured and disorganized work. Help them develop pre writing skills. 

Practice makes a man perfect. This saying applies for kids as well. Writing skills has to be honed. Make them write as much as they can, essay writing, creative writing, journal writing, writing letters to others etc. Often kids avoid things that they don’t do well. But you need to help develop a positive attitude and encourage them to write every day, on overall assignments at school, a quick recap of school lessons. And make sure you point out the mistakes so that he develops the writing skills and also improves the area where he needs to improve. 

Mechanical pencils and gel pens are fun for kids. Make sure you have plenty of cute cards and stationery makes writing letters to friends and relatives a regular writing habit. Encourage journal keeping for special times like a family trip. You can even gift them a diary when they probably enter their teens so that it encourages them to write everyday and it is a good stress buster too. If your child has a writing streak, gifts of writing activity books will encourage their talent. 

1 comment:

  1. Can you write about how to improve the concentration of the child . My daughter is 3.5 yrs and very much play full but pay little attention to the study.

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