Writing Tips - An Easy Way to Improve Your Child's Writing

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    It is easy for a student to correct his or her writing, granted he or she knows where the mistakes are.  Whether your child is writing essays, reports, or explanation, he or she must be able to properly proofread and edit his or her work.

      I have seen it over and over in my classrooms; students editing their writing but still missing their mistakes!  As adults, we can correct our mistakes because we know how to use a dictionary properly, we can hear the ‘flow’ of our sentences, and we know how to use spell checkers.  For some students, it’s a different story.

    Children must learn how to look for errors and be shown how to recognize their mistakes!

     Here are some techniques that you can impart to your child.  Keep in mind, these are skills and they must be practiced consistently when writing.

·         Have your child use automatic spell check when using a word processing program.  Automatic spell checking underlines misspelled words in red.  This is the first step towards your child ‘noticing’ spelling mistakes.

·         Teach your child how to use a dictionary.  I’ve tutored grade 5 students who do not know how to use a dictionary properly.  Not only will these skills help students find misspelled words, but it will also help improve their spelling a great deal.

·         Have your child learn the different homophones (e.g. their and there, your and you’re…).  Misused homophones are extremely common.  A good grasp of the various homophones is important for effective writing.

·         Sentence structure skills should be practiced.  Run-on sentences and sentence fragments are common elements in poor writing.  Have your child avoid these nuisances that hinder good writing.

·         Punctuation!  Your child should be well versed in the use of commas, quotation marks, exclamation marks, question marks, etc…  If your child has difficulties with punctuation, find an online ‘editing checklist’ (or get one from the teacher) which will help your child look for each type of punctuation to correct.
 

     Again, the above are all skills that must be learned over time.  Focus on one skill and when you see that your child has mastered it, move on to the next,  and you should see an improvement in your child's writing skills.

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