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Parents can help kids learn writing | The Honolulu Advertiser | Hawaii's Newspaper
Posted on: Thursday, September 29, 2005

Parents can help kids learn writing

By Treena Shapiro
Advertiser Education Writer

BUILDING SKILLS OUTSIDE OF CLASS

These activities allow parents to help their child build on their writing skills outside of the classroom.

This activity helps your child learn to describe events:

  • Write a story about your favorite trip with your family.

  • Give your story a title.

  • Give as many details as you can.

    This activity helps your child learn to write more than one complete sentence that tells about someone or something:

  • Draw a picture of your school.

  • Write two complete sentences that describe this picture.

    This activity helps your child learn to share information by speaking and writing about it:

  • Tell your family three things that happened in school today. Then write them down as a story.

    This activity helps your child learn to write words and use them in a story:

  • Make a list of some of the words you know.

  • Write a story using two or more of these words.

    This activity helps your child learn to listen to stories to get information:

  • Find a story for your family to read to you. The name of the story is:

  • Listen carefully while the story is being read to you. What is the story mostly about?

    This activity helps your child learn to retell a story:

  • Read a book with your family. Write down the title and author.

  • Tell the story in your own words.

  • What happened first?

  • What happened next?

  • What happened at the end?

    This activity helps your child learn to retell important events in a story:

  • Read a book with your family. Write down the title and author.

  • In your own words, write about two important things that happened in the story.

  • Read what you wrote out loud to someone in your family.

    This activity helps your child learn to read at home and at school, alone and with others:

  • Read a book with your family. Write down the title and author.

  • Who read with you at home this week?

  • What did you read together?

  • Did you read by yourself this week?

  • What did you read?

    This activity helps your child learn to answer and ask questions about a story:

  • Read a book with your family. Write the title and author.

  • What is the story about?

  • If the author of the book were here, what question would you ask?

    Source: "School-Home Links Reading Kit: First Grade Activities" School-Home Reading Links materials can be obtained at www.ed.gov/pubs/CompactforReading.

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    Whether it's helping your first-grader write a sentence about a dog or proofreading your teen's research paper on dogs, there are a number of ways parents can support their children's emerging writing skills.

    With writing a part of the Hawai'i State Assessment and the College Board's SAT, the ability to express thought in words has taken on higher stakes.

    Milton Kimura, a language arts resource teacher for the state Department of Education, said parents need to distinguish between the two types of help they can give: help with specific school assignments or writing in general.

    As far as school assignments go, parents should ask their child's teacher how much help is appropriate. "In some instances, the teachers may be using the assignment as a diagnostic tool designed to show what a child can do on his or her own," he said. In that case, parents can show an interest, but they should not help their child with the work.

    However, for other assignments, teachers may welcome the parent's involvement.

    Regardless of what kids are doing in school, there are many things parents can do to encourage writing in more general ways.

    "Parents can model and explain the kinds of writing they themselves do: writing a check to pay the electric bill, reading a caption under a newspaper photo to find what's special about the people in it, (or) sending an e-mail to a friend on the Mainland," Kimura said.

    Remembering that reading and writing go hand in hand, other things parents can do include asking children to watch for the sign for the proper freeway exit, following a child around as he leads the way to an item on the grocery list or having her sign her name to a birthday card.

    For older children, help may vary depending on how receptive the child is to receiving it.

    "What should remain constant is a genuine interest in the writing a child produces," Kimura said. "While a middle-schooler may no longer want his or her essay displayed on the refrigerator, he or she may appreciate a parent's questions about an essay, a parent's presence at an awards assembly or a parent's willingness to purchase special paper on which to print a personal letter."

    Reach Treena Shapiro at tshapiro@honoluluadvertiser.com.
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