The Development of Writing in Youngsters - Essay Example

The Teaching and Learning of Writing in Primary KS1 and 2 Writing is something that does not just happen. It is a talent that develops slowly and requires a lot of practice. Children from the very beginning like to do things that attract them the most. They get dragged towards the thing that is more pleasing to them. Writing is something that they will commonly not like to do unless there is an interest developed in them. The main part in creating an encouraging writing environment for children is with the help of their parents as well as teachers. They have to take the first step in motivating their children to write. The first step to start off with is to let the child spot the alphabet that he/she remembers. During childhood, the child enjoys making marks on the papers. Move your hand along with theirs to start writing alphabets and let them pronounce those alphabets with you as they write them. Provide them with a plenty amount of writing supplies, mainly pencils and colors. Get a white board with different color markers and make sure to keep it in a place at your kid’s eye level so that he will be promoted to write. Encourage them to write their own stories to express their imaginations as well as their expressions about their writing. Tell them to choose a picture of one person and try to write a narrative imagining that they are that person. They have to concentrate on details like job, hobbies, whether single or married, children, and facts that they think are interesting. (http://www.babybirdproductions.com/bbpadultcreativitytips.html) To proceed further, get beautiful diaries and let them keep those diaries as well as journals to create interest in writing and tell them to spend at least 15 to 30 minutes daily and write about the interesting things that they did or are planning to do during the day for example, making new friends, going on a field trip etc. Try to get them involve in first asking about their favorite things that they would like to eat and then let them make a grocery list and note down their favorite things in the list of grocery items. Once you get them, let them write short thank you notes with creativity to express their joy and appreciate their talent that they have used in their work. To develop further interest, play games with them which would include communication through writing. Give preference to play acting and let them choose any character that they like the most and let them write that character’s part from the play. Make up a situation and let them find a solution of it through their writing ideas. Make them use the best use of word processing program after they are done with the writing assignment and let them use the grammar checker to find out where have they made mistakes. This is the best tool in assessing the grammar and spelling skills. Encouragement plays a great role in creating interest in writing among the children. Prompt them to read so that it will help them in pronouncing the words, and recognizing the sentence structure. If they will fit the words in their mind, it will be easier for them to use their reading skills and keep them in mind while writing. Tell them to read it once before they actually gave it to you to see if they themselves can find any mistake in their writing assignment. Once they have written show them that you are very pleased with their work and give it value. Let them visit the library with you every weekend to let them select a book to select a book of their choice and make sure they get a book which with little reading everyday be finished by the end of the week. Let them summarize the book in their own words once they are done reading it. Arrange them in order of their writing dates to find out what improvements have they made from the early time of their first step in writing skills (http://school.familyeducation.com/writing/38592.html). In small children the writing skills need a lot of guidance as they commit many mistakes in even organizing a sentence, or organizing a sentence into a paragraph. We have to give it a start by first creating a positive behavior in them. Sometimes there are kids who when realize not being a good writer take it a as the toughest part of life. They say things like “I stink at writing” or “I’ll never be a good writer”. With the kids having this attitude in their mind it becomes a tough job to motivate them to write. The first positive aspect of this is throw negative evaluation out of their mind. They need to be told that no person is perfect in writing and that they are not born writers, and that even they got guidance from others and by working hard they got to the level of becoming good writers. Writing is a not something that you either have it or you don’t. It’s something that everyone can do with a little or more polish. One good way to help the kids develop writing skills is make them write again and again. They will make a lot of mistakes in the beginning and with that show no interest in writing. For that, the teachers have to find ways to make them write a little everyday. Give them reading assignments, making them write quick summary of a story, warm-up responses to the questions that that you write on the board, recaps of the current goings. Make sure of whatever they write they know how to pronounce the words, and when they write they write with proper punctuation. By writing this way, they will achieve two main targets: Firstly, they will be practicing writing in general and secondly they will practice on the area which requires help. Encouraging them to revise their work and let them know the importance of it. The children most commonly don’t like to revise their work once they are done with it, but making them read and revise leads to great implement in letting them know what their mistakes are. Polishing is another good tool in that. It tells the kids how far they have gone in making their writing a better one. Let them know that it’s only the hard work that will give a better color to their writing (http://www.howtodothings.com/education/a1924-how-to-help-students-improve-their-writing-skills.html). Stressing on useful prewriting is another factor in improving their writing skills. Let them keep some points before proceeding with the writing. Some kids give more preference to just keep on writing at the same time due to which they habitually create sentences that are muddled, irrational and don’t make sense. Disorganization leads them to think that they cannot write which is not the case. It’s just that good pre writing skills are very important and they are time consuming and should be done with great interest. Giving students examples and rubrics is another good tool. Making them read will give them more ideas in improving their writing skills. Also give students a list of traits they should try to include in each piece they write. If you tell the children what do you expect from them in the essay, it gives them the command to self edit as they go. Do not discourage or let them down even if you think that they have presented it to you in the lousiest form. Even if there is improvement required, support them on the work they have done but with reasonable explanations to give them better ideas to improve their skills. Let them know that they have made a good shot in it but further would lead to make it the best one. The teacher should look on the strengths as well weaknesses in the paper. They should not allow the errors to distract them from commenting positively on a student’s attempt to produce something to the best of his or her potential. We should let them know that is not a big deal to make mistake and that in fact it just leads to a better body of writing skills. As mentioned in the above paragraphs, there are plentiful ways to help small kids in provoking them to write and develop better developing skills. Creativity and appreciation are two major things that play a major role in the development of writing in youngsters. With the student’s level of language, the teacher can assist how far have he/she gone and how much guidance do they require in providing them to present a better writing assignment. Emphasize on the content of the topic, avoiding language errors. Getting on the other side focusing on the content separately from grammar helps us to deal with the rhetorical structure which itself is an essential part of composing that is unfortunately neglected by teachers most of the time. Creating opportunities for students to make their writing public increases their engagement with it, as well as widens their sense of audience. Works Cited Baby Bird Productions, 2003-2006, If You Want Your Kids To Develop Creativity: http://www.babybirdproductions.com/bbpadultcreativitytips.html Beth Danesco, 11 April 2006, How To Help Students Improve Their Writing Skills: http://www.howtodothings.com/education/a1924-how-to-help-students-improve-their-writing-skills.html How to Help Your Children Become Better Writers: http://school.familyeducation.com/writing/38592.html Word Count: 1,514 Read More