General Writing Strategies

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Activities that promote children's writing

StoryTellers

Useful writing strategies to use at home

Be a role model
Let your children see you write - anything from recipes, to letters, to messages and shopping lists. Encourage the family to write as well - email or letters to friends, cards and thankyou notes etc.

Have children use writing as a functional task - like the above, but they do the work. To illustrate this point, here's a little story.

I once took my niece to get some take away food and she and the family wanted McDonalds. So I said she had to make a list of what everyone wanted. When I checked the list, she had spelt Quarter Pounder as Quoter Bounder. I told her I was going to ask for a Quoter Bounder (pronounced exactly as she had spelt it) if she didn't fix it by the time I got around to ordering. I've never seen a child so motivated to fix a simple spelling mistake!! :) It also reinforced to her the importance of using conventional spelling when other people had to read her work.

Display writing at home
Lists of things to do, letters and postcards on the fridge door, birthday cards etc. You could make a kitchen notice-board to display these things.

Praise writing that is brought home from school
Talk about it and encourage your child to bring work home. Be an interested listener and reader, and focus on what the writing is about rather than the spelling, grammar and so on.

Give presents that encourage writing
Pens, pencils, diaries, a lamp for the desk, paper, note pads and even dictionaries are all things that can works towards encouraging children to write.

Some of this information has been sourced from the book "Parents, Teachers, Partners" by Barry Dwyer.