Tips for Parents to Encourage Student Writing

• Coach – don’t write – for your child. Question, listen, and talk about writing together. Students need to do their own drafting, revising, and editing with you at the sidelines.
   

• Look first for what is done well in the writing and offer praise. Writing is a challenging task. Children need encouragement to be successful.
   

• When working with your child, focus on ideas and content first. Save editing until the ideas are clear, complete, and focused.
   

• Listen attentively as your child reads writing to you.
   

• Encourage even the youngest writers to “read” their writing aloud whether it is scribbles, drawings, or strings of letters. Talk about the story.
   

• Build a climate of words at home. Go places and see things with your child, then talk about what has been seen, heard, smelled, tasted, touched. The basis of good writing is good talk, and younger children especially grow into stronger control of language when loving adults -- particularly parents -- share experiences and rich talk about those experiences.
   

• Read aloud to your children – no matter the age. Discuss good examples of writing from newspapers, magazines, poetry, descriptions from travel brochures, and instructions on toys, games. Read from fiction and non-fiction.
   

• Let your child SEE you write.
   

• Share your own writing with your children. Ask for their feedback on your effort.
   

• Provide a suitable place for children to write. A quiet corner is best, the child's own place, if possible. If not, any flat surface with elbow room, a comfortable chair, and a good light will do.
   

• Give the child, and encourage others to give, the gifts associated with writing (special pencils, desk lamp, pads of paper, stationery, envelopes, diary/daily journal, dictionary, thesaurus and erasers).
   

• Share letters from friends and relatives. Treat such letters as special events. Urge relatives and friends to write notes and letters to the child, no matter how brief. Writing is especially rewarding when the child gets a response. When thank-you notes are in order, after a holiday especially, sit with the child and write your own notes at the same time. Writing ten letters (for ten gifts) is a heavy burden for the child; space the work and be supportive.
   

• Turn off the TV.
   

• Visit the library.
   

• Read, read, read! Better readers make better writers!

Source: Writing Resources