Originally published on the New Jersey Kids Online website

As children move through school, the writing demands increase rapidly. Students must first master proper letter formation, then learn to write words, sentences, stories, and soon multi-paragraph essays. ‎Some students enjoy expressing their thoughts on paper, but for others, this task is downright daunting. Help your child develop stronger writing skills with the ideas detailed below.

Simply beginning the writing process can be challenging for many students. They often feel overwhelmed and at the thought of having to compose a well-written sentence or paragraph. To combat these fears, encourage your child to start by simply jotting down ideas about a given topic. For instance, if your child is asked to write a paragraph on why he likes winter, he can start by‎ listing ideas about the joys of winter. He might write in list format, for instance: one can play in the snow, roast marshmallows, go skiing or snowboarding, travel, and spend time around a fireplace. Once these ideas are on the page, he can then highlight the three or so points he plans to include in his writing.

Create a Brainstorm Web

After your child has selected the points she plants to elaborate on in her paragraph, she should brainstorm these ideas in an organized fashion. While there are different formats she can use for brainstorming, a web diagram is a useful tool. She can, for instance, brainstorm for a basic five sentence paragraph by writing the topic in a rectangular box at the top of the page, connecting it to three circular bubbles beneath it (for the three key points, such as playing in the snow, skiing, and roasting marshmallows), and finally ending with another rectangular box at the bottom for the concluding sentence. Computer-based programs, such as Kidspiration can also serve as engaging multi-sensory options for brainstorming.

Start Writing

Once your child has listed his ideas and then created a brainstorm diagram, he can turn those boxes and bubbles into complete sentences to form his paragraph. Have him turn the “topic” box into a topic sentence, such as “There are many fun and engaging activities one can do during the winter.” Next, he can turn each detail bubble into full sentences. For example, “You can play outside building snowmen. You can go skiing or snowboarding. You can also roast marshmallows around a fire.” Finally, he should turn the bottom box into a conclusion sentence, which can express his opinion on the topic, such as “I love winter” or “Winter is my favorite time of year.”

Remember to self-check!

Many students have a tendency to speed through their work to “get it over with” and often forget to self-check their writing. Rather than telling them to simply “check” their work, teach them specific tools for how to go about doing so, such as the COPS acronym, which stands for Capitalization, Organization, Punctuation, and ‎Spelling. Have her write the COPS acronym vertically at the bottom of her paragraph with a check box next to each letter. Once she is done writing her paragraph, encourage her to go back and check for each individual item on the check list (one at a time) and check off each one once she makes the relevant corrections.

Writing demands in school increase at a rapid pace. Help your child learn to effectively express her ideas on paper in an organized, well-structured manner and she will be well on her way to school success.

The post Help Your Child Build Stellar Writing Skills appeared first on EBL Coaching.

New York City learning specialist Emily Levy has developed this set of fifteen workbooks, best for late elementary and middle school students in need of highly structured training in reading comprehension, organizing ideas, and writing. They are structured on sound principles to support student mastery: integration of the same techniques throughout the various workbooks, and the opportunity students to work through many examples of each skill.

The teaching of highlighting in color is the premise on which the series is based.
Highlighting for topic, main idea, and details is explicitly taught, first using pictures and then paragraphs of text. Students use the same three colors for the same elements throughout the workbooks on summarizing text and note taking. Later, students can choose their own highlighting colors as they structure their own paragraphs and essays.

Each of the excellent note taking books develops skill in a different technique: webbing, column note taking, and outlining. The three books on writing–two on paragraphs and one on the 5-paragraph essay—integrate the skills of webbing and color highlighting. In all the books on writing skills, checklists appear after each student writing page, based on COPS (Capitalizing, Organization, Punctuation, Spelling) and paragraph structure (Topic Sentence, Detail, Detail, Detail, Concluding Sentence).

While the series is subtitled A Multisensory Approach, in fact most of the work exercises a student’s visual and motor skills. Nonetheless, the emphasis on teaching students to use color coding is a wise way to enrich visual processing of language structure. Two books explicitly teach auditory analysis of text, integrated with visual and motor representation: “Visualizing Text”, which employs fiction passages read aloud to the student who then draws a series of pictures; and “Summarizing”, which presents nonfiction passages that can either be read to the student or read independently by the student for summarizing in writing. In appearance, these books are unadorned and non-distracting.

Learning disabled students are likely to come away from this series feeling more confident in their capacity to analyze and structure text.

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