“Words are a lens to focus one’s mind.”
Ayn Rand
We recognize the importance of reading and math but writing is often overlooked as a skill to develop in our children. Parents are rarely guided as to how to support and encourage their children’s writing achievement. However, we are also aware that writing (comprised of handwriting, written expression, and spelling) equips us with both thinking skills and communication abilities. It’s the way we express ourselves as people. In fact, writing makes our thinking and learning visible and permanent. We all agree that writing fosters our ability to explain and refine our ideas both to ourselves and to others.
Parents can play a crucial role as a writing coach to their child. Especially in this time of a national pandemic, parents are better positioned to provide at home instruction and support to their children as we are in reality all “sheltered in place”. Still, we are looking forward to a Fall season where learning at home will likely continue on a part time or full-time basis.
It is my belief as a long-time educator, remediator, and professor, that parents can in fact be the “at home writing coach” for their children. I want to recommend 10 suggestions for parents to focus and strengthen writing skills as their child’s writing coach.
Know your child
“A writer is a world trapped in a person.”
Victor Hugo
It is a common belief that parents know their child best. Raising your child and sharing common experiences equips you to best know the interests, habits, motivation, learning style, temperament, preferences for academic competencies of your child. The first suggestion for our parent coach is to provide a myriad of writing opportunities fitted around who your child is. Whether it is picking out favorite books, labeling your child’s toys or possessions, writing instructions for their collections, keeping a diary for family events, provide opportunities for your child to write (rather than just talk) to keep a more memorable way to collect, organize and retain his on going experiences.
Model yourself as a writing coach
“Being a good writer is 3 percent talent,
97 percent not being distracted by the internet,”
Anonymous
Learning is best accomplished through modeling and who is typically the best model of behavior for a child is his parent. Parents need to be aware of their potential effectiveness as a model. They can ask themselves some of the following questions:
- Are they themselves active writers or readers?
- Do they provide a “writing rich” or “reading rich” environment where numerous writing activities are encouraged (e.g. list making, note taking, annotations of books, playing word puzzles and games).
- Do they get involved in their child’s writing projects and assignments?
- Do they help their child in the writing process-drafting, outlining, researching, organizing, and promulgating written thoughts to others.
Explore the world
“When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ”I am going to produce a work of art.” I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.”
George Orwell
We often say that we bring the world to a child and then as he ages we bring the child to the world. As parents, you have brought a never-ending stream of topics to your child (now even virtually) to discuss, reflect, and chronicle in writing. Whether you just went to a museum, watched a documentary, visited bookstores and libraries, go to movies and theater, attend sporting or recreational events, connect writing activities for their meaningfulness to enrich the fabric of the family. As a parent, provide never ending topics to write about-trips (virtual or not), museums, history or political events, forums, newspapers, science fairs. Keep photo albums with captions that your child writes which would help to memorialize each event. There are always topics and issues in our world that upon reflection in your family would be worth while brainstorming about for future oral and written communication.
Provide writing space and time
“Start writing no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”
Louis L’Amour
Look at the location that you designate for your writing and ask yourself the following questions:
- Do you have adequate space for writing, e.g. desk, table, laptop, shelves?
- Do you have sufficient writing utensils (pens, pencils, erasers)?
- Is the ventilation and lighting appropriate?
- Is the seating comfortable and proportionally the right height for the desk?
- What computers or tablets do you have, including the size of the monitor, storage space and printer options?
- Do you have portable writing surfaces e.g. moveable desktop or clip boards?
- What is your storage system for papers and writing materials?
Consider your child’s writing space and apply these reasonable criteria for your child’s writing environment.
Now look at whether time is designated for writing assignments, projects, or papers. Again, we dedicate time for reading (family reading time,USSR-uninterrupted sustained silent reading), bedtime stories. However, we rarely allocate time for writing activities. Why Not! Begin to dedicate time for writing-1/2 hour of only writing time, personal reflections with a written response, preparing family cards or messages. Emphasize the time the family devotes to writing. Recently our college professors initiated a Writing Salon where the professors would be invited to monthly meetings in a quiet room in the college library to provide time for their own writing projects.
Given the right time and space, we can all enhance our writing opportunities and abilities and foster them for our children.
Support journaling
“I kept 2 books in my pocket, 1 to read, one to write in.”
Robert Louis Stevenson
Journaling, as we all know, is a personal record of occurrences, experiences, and reflections kept on a regular basis. Often there are no rules for these unstructured writing experiences, and they are now being used in a multitude of ways. Teachers have built it into all levels of instruction, e.g. writing personal diaries, keeping journals as written from the perspective of a character from a historical era, using as a writing samples from journals or portfolio assessment throughout a school year.
Parents need to be encouraged to initiate a journaling system at home. There are countless attractive journals sold in nearby bookstores and can reflect personal tastes. Every family member could have their own personal diary. Questions about their personal nature and privacy issues must be addressed. You can expand these writing activities to include gratitude journals, scrapbooking, annotated photo albums, travel guides, and remembrance activities. These would be ideal to share writing excerpts as a point of family get togethers.
Make it Fun
“I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done.”
Stephen Wright
Do you remember this….
- Writing on the blackboard hundreds of times a word that you misspelled
- Screeching of the chalk on the blackboard
- Diagramming sentences for grammar exercise
- Writing apologies repeatedly for misbehavior
- Writing with the right hand when you were naturally a left-handed person
- Being forced to use cursive writing
These are some of the unpleasant memories that many of us might recall regarding writing being less than fun, even punitive activity.
There are many ways to use a fun element in a writing activity-use game like formats, hold competitions or contests, use motivating techniques, include story starters or key jar techniques to generate topics for writing. Consider using creative visual approaches, e.g. digital stories, visual sketch, PowerPoints, Prezi, cartoon annotations/ illustrations to format your writing and make it more dynamic. Parents keep up with these assistive technology devices and brainstorming ideas to be able to support your child’s creative tendencies. Make writing an entertainment activity that your children will look forward to sharing.
Emphasize literacy
“Read, read, read. Read everything-trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it.
Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out.
If it’s not, throw it out of the window,”
William Faulkner
Have writing as a family affair. Read common books, share “buddy readings” at night. Our family has read assigned readings for the class book lists in order to hold discussions from all family members on the shared book. Books we recently chose were Wonder, I am Malala and Fault of the Stars. You can follow it up with writing down main ideas, favorite characters, predicted endings, alternate titles. Also important is to encourage selections of different genres for reading and writing, e.g. essays, editorials, poems, short stories, books, textbooks as well as watching documentary TV or movie selections. Try fun ideas such as “Drop everything to read” or having a buddy system where parents can read every other page or chapter of a book with their child. Surround your children with books, written materials, reference books to stimulate their ideas for expression.
Support school assignments
“Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but, most of all, endurance.”
James Baldwin
As the writing coach, become involved in your child’s school assignments and homework. Yes that can definitely change through the grades and for varied subject matter, You may feel comfortable assisting in 3rd grade literacy classes, 5th grade social studies, and 12th grade psychology classes but perhaps not for other disciplines or complexity of work. Nevertheless, take a broader perspective-learn about the schedule for assignments, policies, expectations, grading, feedback and see where you can be the comfortable supporter. Encourage the use of a calendar to plan for short term and long-term assignments (especially with a writing component) Emphasize editing, proofreading, drafting of written work and volunteer in this capacity to strengthen writing products. Try to be available for these written projects and help your child to complete them in a timely way.
Formalize writing
“One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world.”
Malala Yousafzai
In our informal, casual time for communication, stress the formality and clarity of our written contact. Rather than short, abbreviated responses in texts or our moji system of illustrations, emphasize the value of writing with a comprehensive content. Use opportunities to write letters (rather than always texts or e mails) with your child as well as thank you notes, full annotations, detailed notes that reflect time and focus on written communication. Again, model the importance in your life of a detailed thought and idea in written communication to be shared with others.
Stress healing powers
“I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.”
Anne Frank
The final suggestion for parents to be the “at home writing coach” is to consider the potential healing nature of writing. For many decades, practitioners have recognized that writing activities (e.g. logs, diaries, journals, questionnaires, surveys) can help manage reactions to experiences both positive and negative in a child’s life. Parents can certainly provide writing opportunities to serve as cathartic experiences for the children. Give them the chance to self-reflect on their anxieties, stresses, relationships, adjustment and possibly other issues. This “healing” factor of written expression can help promote communication both interpersonally and intrapersonally. No you don’t have to be “the therapist” but rather the involved parent who supports writing capabilities and want to continuously strengthen them for their children.
In reviewing all of these suggestions for parent’s role as a writing coach, you probably do many of these suggestions already in your daily parenting. Hopefully in reflecting on the power of writing as an activity in a purposeful way, you, as a parent, can enhance your child’s development and foster more connectedness to their world. Please remember promoting the written expression of your children in an intentional way enables them to communicate more effectively for future endeavors.