Parent Guide:
Supporting Writing Skills for Elementary School Students
What You Need To Know
To achieve an authentic writing experience, parents need to acknowledge that the writing process is fluid – there’s a lot of time spent thinking, exploring new ideas, not liking what has been written, and then finally, some progress! A true learning process emerges when their writing goes back and forth between the Writing, Revising, and Editing stages. Don’t get frustrated when your kids are experiencing “Writer’s Block” because they may just be thinking through their ideas and how they want to communicate them.
Steps in the Writing Process
1. Prewriting – Generating ideas
2. Writing – Getting ideas down
3. Revising – Making changes to improve writing
4. Editing – Proofread and correct errors
5. Publishing – Creating your final copy
To achieve an authentic writing experience, parents need to acknowledge that the writing process is fluid – there’s a lot of time spent thinking, exploring new ideas, not liking what has been written, and then finally, some progress! A true learning process emerges when their writing goes back and forth between the Writing, Revising, and Editing stages. Don’t get frustrated when your kids are experiencing “Writer’s Block” because they may just be thinking through their ideas and how they want to communicate them.
Steps in the Writing Process
1. Prewriting – Generating ideas
2. Writing – Getting ideas down
3. Revising – Making changes to improve writing
4. Editing – Proofread and correct errors
5. Publishing – Creating your final copy
Conversation starters
What can you do to help your kids overcome that infamous “Writer’s Block”? What can you do to support them when they lament “I don’t know what to write about!”? Believe it or not, the best, most effective thing you can do at home is to talk with them and to listen to their ideas.
Parent Tip –
Here are some immediate benefits of supporting your child’s writing skills through conversation and active listening:
Want to get your kids talking? These “50 Questions to Ask Your Kids” from the blog Her View From Home is an awesome compilation of conversation starters. Here are a few from the list to grab your interest:
Here are some more open ended conversation starters "40 Questions That Get Kids Talking" from Positive Parenting Connection and "36 Questions for Increasing Closeness" from Greater Good In Action.
What can you do to help your kids overcome that infamous “Writer’s Block”? What can you do to support them when they lament “I don’t know what to write about!”? Believe it or not, the best, most effective thing you can do at home is to talk with them and to listen to their ideas.
Parent Tip –
Here are some immediate benefits of supporting your child’s writing skills through conversation and active listening:
- They generate creative ideas
- They learn to express details
- They receive validation from you about their thoughts
- They are empowered to create new content
- They develop their sense of “voice” (which comes out in their writing later on)
- They enjoy a broad spectrum of discussion topics (which will transfer into willingness to try a wide range of writing styles)
Want to get your kids talking? These “50 Questions to Ask Your Kids” from the blog Her View From Home is an awesome compilation of conversation starters. Here are a few from the list to grab your interest:
- Teach me something I don’t know.
- Who did you sit with at lunch?
- What made you smile today?
- Who inspired you today?
- What are you looking forward to tomorrow?
Here are some more open ended conversation starters "40 Questions That Get Kids Talking" from Positive Parenting Connection and "36 Questions for Increasing Closeness" from Greater Good In Action.
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Want to try some authentic writing activities that you can easily incorporate into your daily home routine? Check out this list of writing activities:
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