What should you tell him when he can’t seem to get started writing?

What advice can you offer when perfectionism rears its ugly head and he has trouble accepting his own mistakes?

Typically, you can’t say or do much—especially if he’s already in a funk. But if you can bite your tongue and sit on your hands till a teaching moment arises, he might be willing to consider one of these ten truths.

1. It’s not just you. I promise.

Writing isn’t always easy. I’m sure you think you’re the only one who suffers from writer’s block, but it might help to know that even famous published authors will agonize over a word, a sentence, or a paragraph.

2. There’s no penalty for a bad first draft.

“The beautiful part of writing is that you don’t have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon.” ~Robert Cromier

3. If you’re stuck, explain to someone what you’re trying to write.

My adult son is a former reluctant writer. But even to this day, as a Ph.D. student, he’ll call me from time to time when he hits a writing roadblock. Often, I do nothing more than listen and offer the occasional “Mm-hmm.” But the act of thinking aloud and tossing around ideas can open up the floodgate, and he finds that the log jam of words will finally loosen.

4. Set a timer.

Having trouble getting started? Grab a kitchen timer and set it for 15 minutes. You can do anything for 15 minutes, right? And some days, you may not even hear the beep.

5. To write well, it helps to read well.

Reading teaches you how words work. You can become more attuned to detail, imagery, voice, and sentence construction. There’s no guarantee that being an avid reader will automatically make you a polished writer, but reading certainly lays a foundation for writing in many ways.

6. Style comes with practice.

Writing may not be second nature to you, but you will learn to develop your own writing style over time.

7. It’s better to write poorly than not at all.

You can always improve your rough draft. Don’t get hung up on perfection. Everyone revises!

“The first rule of writing is to write. The second rule of writing is to rewrite. The third rule of writing is the same as the second.” ~Paul Raymond Martin

8. Don’t write and edit in the same sitting.

I can’t tell you how many little errors I catch when I revisit a piece of my own writing even one day later! I know it’s tempting to just “get it over with.” But really, you’re much wiser to let that essay marinate for a couple of days. When you come back to it, you’ll be more likely to see it with fresh eyes and be willing to make changes.

[Of course, this means you can't wait till the last minute to write your rough draft. 'Nuf said.]

9. Learn to edit your own work.

This is one of the most valuable writing skills you can acquire. The more adept you become at self-editing, the less you have to rely on others to point out flaws. Before you turn your paper over to your parent or teacher, proofread and revise it first.

• Am I being too wordy?
• Repeating myself?
• Making my point?
• Varying my sentence structure?
• Using descriptive detail?
• Punctuating properly?

Your writing will always benefit from a second set of eyes, but learning to edit your own work is a lifelong skill every student needs to develop. While you’ll never be completely objective about your own writing, the ability to self-edit is equally important as having another person do it for you.

10. Edit your writing as if it were someone else’s.

Take an emotional step away from your paper. Imagine that it was written by the kid who flips burgers at McDonald’s, and begin to look for ways the writing could improve. It’s much easier to be objective when you pretend that your composition isn’t actually yours!

Copyright 2012 © Kim Kautzer. All rights reserved.

. . . . .

WriteShop  provides schedules, checklists, and detailed instructions that give teen writers direction and help them stay on task. Choosing WriteShop I and II will help you equip and inspire successful writers!

Although it’s is one of the most necessary and helpful steps of the writing process, brainstorming can stump a reluctant writer—even if she’s using a worksheet, graphic organizer, or parent prompting.

You:    What comes to mind when you think of the beach?
Child: Sand and water.
You:    Great! What else?
Child: That’s all I can think of.

And that’s on a good day!

Prime the Pump

When students have a deep “well” of words and ideas from which to draw, their compositions becomes more vivid and concrete. That’s why WriteShop repeatedly emphasizes the need for adequate brainstorming as a routine part of the writing process. But if their well is dry and they can’t come up with enough words or ideas, their compositions will fall flat.

To keep ideas fresh and flowing, students need to prime their writing pumps on a regular basis. By practicing frequent brainstorming—especially when there’s no added pressure to write a composition—they’ll discover that they can think of words more quickly and abundantly. An activity like the Writing Well is a perfect training tool!

The Writing Well

The “Writing Well” is designed to stimulate vocabulary, ideas, and impressions on a particular topic. It makes a good pre-writing activity, but it’s really brainstorming practice in disguise!

Kept in a small notebook, these brainstorming results can also become a “seed book”—a resource, word bank, or collection of ideas—when writing future compositions.

Student Directions

1. You will find it helpful to keep your “Writing Well” in a spiral notebook for easy reference.
2. Use a separate page for each topic. You may use both front and back if you wish.
3. Before beginning, choose a topic and write it at the top of the page. Then set the timer to write for five full minutes.
4. The purpose of this exercise is to write down all the words, phrases, or sentences that come to mind about your chosen topic within the five minutes allotted.

If you get stuck, try some of these ideas:

• Picture the topic in your mind. Use your five senses—sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell—to describe details.
• Ask yourself questions about the subject matter—who? what? when? where? why? how?
• Use a photograph or magazine picture to jog your thoughts.

At first this activity may seem difficult. You may wonder: How can I write about one thing for five whole minutes? Relax! Over time you’ll find that it has become more natural to transfer ideas from your head to your paper.

Some of these exercises will lend themselves to becoming compositions. Put a colorful star at the top of the page if you might like to develop this into a paragraph or story in the future.

Parent Tips

In the beginning, your child may have trouble writing for five full minutes. Perhaps you could set the timer for three minutes, then increase it to four, and finally to five over the course of several weeks.

If your student brainstorms very generally about a topic, you might suggest next time that she narrow her topic even further. For example, if she writes on the topic of animals, she’ll probably include a list of many kinds of animals. Next time, have her select just one of those animals (such as dogs, monkeys, or whales) and make a “Writing Well” for that subtopic, including as many details as she can.

Should your student repeatedly make lists of words only, challenge her to begin writing descriptive phrases, too. Sometimes these will be factual and sometimes experiential. For example:

If she’s writing about “red,” words and phrases might include:

• ketchup
• stop signs
• making Valentines for my family
• embers glowing in the fireplace
• fire engines
• Dorothy’s ruby slippers
• the crimson sunset on our vacation in California  

If she’s writing about Grandma, phrases might include:

• baking chocolate cookies together
• lives in an apartment in Miami
• smells sweet like roses
• takes a ceramics class in her clubhouse
• silver hair
• favorite color is pink

The random list of ”red” words and phrases probably won’t ever be developed into a paragraph. On the other hand, the “Grandma” list definitely has potential to become a great descriptive composition at some point.

Writing Well Topics

Are you ready? Dip your ladle deep into the Writing Well and pull up a full, soaking draught of words and ideas. Then spill them over a fresh page—and let the writing begin. Here are some topics to get you started!

• a famous place I would like to visit
• my dream car
• gardens
• books
• animals (farm animals, jungle creatures, pets, birds, insects)
• birthdays
• the beach
• fishing
• obeying
• snow
• sounds that make me happy (nervous, afraid)
• my childhood toys
• my favorite meal
• my grandpa (or other family member)
• our pantry
• Saturdays
• things I like about myself
• heaven
• the color blue (orange, yellow, gray, green)
• things that make me feel cozy
• new uses for duct tape
• If cars could fly…
• If I had to live underwater…

Copyright © 2012 Kim Kautzer. All rights reserved.

. . . . .

“The Writing Well” is one of the supplemental writing activities tucked into the appendix of the Teacher’s Manual for WriteShop I and II.

Creative Commons photo courtesy of Flickr. Other photos courtesy of stock.xchg. Used with permission.

Sometimes oral descriptions can pave the way to written descriptions, gently opening kids to their own creativity. Try the following thinking game the next time your young ones protest, ”But I don’t know what to say!”

See how many answers each child can think of for each item below. Keep an informal score for a friendly competition.

1.) Describe one thing you might see in a…

• refrigerator
• living room
• closet
• car

2.) Describe two things you might find…

• at the library
• in a craft-supply store
• on the playground
• at an amusement park

3.) Describe something you see…

• in the autumn
• in the winter
• at the beach
• in a restaurant

4.) Describe something you might wear…

• in a rainstorm
• to a costume party
• on a snowy day
• to play a sport

Now, have your children choose one of their oral responses and elaborate upon it in written words.

“Writer’s block? What writer’s block?” you’ll be mumbling to yourself, as the kids scribble away!

. . . . .

Janet Wagner is a regular contributor to In Our Write Minds. For over two decades, Janet was an elementary and middle school teacher in two Christian academies, a public district school, and a public charter school. She also had the honor of helping to homeschool her two nieces. Janet and her husband Dean live on the family farm in the Piedmont region of north central North Carolina. Currently, she enjoys a flexible life of homemaking, volunteering, reading, writing, tutoring students and training dogs, and learning how to build websites. You can view her web work-in-progress at www.creative-writing-ideas-and-activities.com.

My child is a high school freshman, and thus far, our homeschool experience has not gone well where writing is concerned. Every program we’ve tried seems to fall by the wayside by Christmas break. Normally, she’s an independent worker who does well with most self-directed assignments—except for writing. We just never finish.

Does this sound familiar? If so, let’s see if I can offer some advice to help you and your teen get back on track!

Parent Involvement vs. Student Independence

I’m all for fostering independence. As students enter the high school years, it’s especially wise to train them to become more and more responsible for their own schoolwork. This means teaching them to break assignments into chunks, work on multiple projects, and stick to deadlines.

But even if a self-directed child is successful in most academic subjects, she may still be floundering when it comes to self-directed writing assignments. This is largely because, for most students, writing must be taught. Good writing is the result of a partnership between a parent/teacher and the student.

Get involved!

A child who rarely finishes a writing assignment can’t be left to learn writing on her own; clearly this approach is failing her. If this is true of your child, you may need to step in and become more involved in teaching, guiding, editing, and grading her work. She may not appreciate your “interference,” but if she’s not succeeding on her own, something needs to change.

Begin by working closely with her to introduce, model, and teach new concepts. After that, let her work independently on her assignment. If she continues to struggle, misses deadlines, or fails to give her best effort, recognize that you’ll need to spend more one-on-one time together while she writes. As she throws herself more fully into her writing and gives effort to assignments, you can start backing off again.

Learning to Stick It Out

Sometimes a curriculum just isn’t working and you need to take a different approach. But if you keep abandoning ship—specifically where writing is concerned—it’s time to ask yourself why. This is especially important if you’ve tried several writing programs but find you never seem to finish any of them.

Is it a character issue—or an academic one?

Does your child:

• Complain about other subjects, sports, music lessons, or chores—or just about writing?
• Put up enough of a fight (about anything) that you toss up your hands in despair and give in to her complaints?
• Make such a fuss over writing in particular that it’s easier to give up without finishing the program?

If this describes your home, consider working on the character qualities of diligence and perseverance. Students need to learn that sometimes, even though a curriculum is less than ideal, they can’t just quit as soon as it gets too hard.

In the real world, they won’t always have choices, but if they’ve gotten into the habit of abandoning something partway through when the going gets tough, it will be hard for them to practice stick-to-itiveness in the future. (For example, they’ll be more likely to drop a college class the minute it begins to get challenging.)

Even if this stop-start-stop-start habit only applies to writing, I would still encourage you to decide on a course of action and commit to seeing it through. You’ll probably agree it’s time to make follow-through a priority.

Taking a Different Tack

Perhaps you simply need a new approach to teaching writing. It’s a legitimate possibility that your child’s learning style just hasn’t meshed with other writing programs you’ve tried in the past. In this case, WriteShop might genuinely help you overcome the hurdles you’ve experienced.

For one, WriteShop expects parent involvement yet fosters independence. Furthermore, WriteShop promotes the writing process through:

• Prewriting activities that set the stage for the writing assignment and get creative juices flowing.
• Brainstorming worksheets that help students develop ideas before it’s time to write.
• Step-by-step instructions for writing that never leave them wondering what, exactly, they’re supposed to do.
• Short assignments (rarely longer than a paragraph) so that they can work on sentence and stylistic skills.
• Activities and assignments that are broken up into bite-size portions over two weeks per writing lesson so as not to overwhelm a student.
• Detailed, lesson-specific self-editing checklists that enable students to proofread their own work and make corrections before handing their paper in to you.
• Parent checklists and grading keys that help you give objective feedback.

Past writing failures don’t have to be accurate preditors of future success. With a few adjustments in attitude and/or method, your teen can get back on track—and with time to spare.

Copyright 2011 © Kim Kautzer. All rights reserved. 

“But I don’t know what to write about!” 

“I can’t think of anything!”

How many times have we heard these cries of anguish when asking our children to face a blank page? And although we may do our best to encourage their creative efforts through the use of topic-specific prompts, sometimes we need to give kids more direction, more of a step-ladder to climb into the clarity of their own thinking.

Smaller Steps

The next time you’re faced with kids who are absolutely convinced the power of the pen has abandoned them, try breaking the prompt itself down into manageable parts. Doing so allows children to concentrate on one task at a time and to experience feedback in developing their ideas for written expression.

The “I Remember” Activity

Let’s use the prompt “Write about a favorite memory” as an example of breaking a writing topic into smaller chunks of ideas. This activity gives a feeling for the writing process approach and works well with any age.

• Think of five things that have happened to you. Write down each of the five things, beginning with the phrase, “I remember.” When you’ve finished, share your ideas with me.
• Now, write down one name associated with each of the five things you selected.
• Write down the most important of the five senses (taste, touch, hearing, sight, or smell) that goes with each of your “I remembers.”
• Now select the “I remember” you would most like to write about. Share the memory with me.
• Now, writing as fast as you can for ten minutes, see how much of the memory you can get on paper. Don’t worry about punctuation or spelling; you can think about that later, if you like what you’ve written.
• Now, let’s read your story and think of ways to possibly make it even better.

By tackling a topic in this step-by-step manner, students become more confident and skilled in the brainstorming and drafting stages of writing. And as they will discover, fluent writing flows from the power of knowing you have something to say.

. . . . .

Janet Wagner is a regular contributor to In Our Write Minds. For over two decades, Janet was an elementary and middle school teacher in two Christian academies, a public district school, and a public charter school. She also had the honor of helping to homeschool her two nieces. Janet and her husband Dean live on the family farm in the Piedmont region of north central North Carolina. Currently, she enjoys a flexible life of homemaking, volunteering, reading, writing, tutoring students and training dogs, and learning how to build websites. You can view her web work-in-progress at www.creative-writing-ideas-and-activities.com.

It may not sound like your idea of fun, but if you have a reluctant writer, I can fairly guarantee that he’d rather make a PowerPoint presentation than write a report by hand. As a matter of fact, allowing your child to display his understanding of a subject in a fresh new way can spark tremendous enthusiasm and eagerness.

Creating a PowerPoint presentation appeals to children on so many levels:

• Perfect for both visual and kinesthetic learners.
• Appeals to children who are artistic and creative.
• Appeals to children who love technology.
• Offers a break from more traditional schoolwork.
• Teaches important computer and keyboarding skills.
• Encourages research.

Children can use a Microsoft® PowerPoint slide show to explain a scientific concept such as photosynthesis, volcanoes, or the water cycle. They can create reports about penguins, submarines, ancient Greece, ballet, or Dwight D. Eisenhower. Adding photos, clipart, and tidbits of information in bullet-point form, they’re absorbing and applying knowledge. It’s fun, creative, novel, and interesting, making the PowerPoint a great way to mix up traditional report writing with technology.

With a few months of the school year still remaining, perhaps the time is right to try something new. Why not introduce your children to PowerPoint? For some basic tutorials, start here:

• Free Microsoft course: Create your first presentation
• Using PowerPoint for Mac
• eHow PowerPoint tutorial for kids
• PowerPoint resources

There’s nothing quite like a blank page to ruin a perfectly good day.

We need to put words to paper, but they will not come. The blank page intimidates us. The objects in the room call, our eyes wander, and our mind runs to places that are more desirable. We struggle to come back to the page with pen in hand. In the meantime, the white space has grown in intensity, until it is blinding. –Richard Mansel, “The Fear of the Blank Page“

It can be a formidable foe, this empty field of white—especially for the child who struggles to coax even a short string of words from his reluctant pen.

Fortunately, there are simple things you can do to help the most reluctant student find his footing—or at least his voice. Let’s look at nine ways you can encourage your child to face (and perhaps even conquer!) that blank sheet of paper.

1. Write first thing. 

Consider starting the school day with a writing activity, while attitudes are still positive and minds feel more creative. Facing an unpleasant or challenging task earlier in the day—when your children are fresh and alert—may be the key to unlocking ideas.

2. Brainstorm separately before beginning to write.

Jotting down random thoughts—no matter how jumbled—can help release a log jam of words and phrases. Encourage your kids to brainstorm before beginning any writing assignment.

3. Set parameters for the assignment.

Few children find it freeing to hear: “Write about whatever you want.” The vastness of total choice can overwhelm even the most eager writer, so establish some boundaries for the assignment. For example:

• Specify the kind of writing. Will the composition be a personal narrative? A persuasive essay? A descriptive piece? 
• Let students choose a topic within a particular genre such as mystery or adventure, or within a current area of study such as pioneer days or the Great Depression. 
• Give expectations regarding composition length or number of sources you require. 

4. Offer story prompts.

StoryBuilders are creative writing-prompt cards that let students choose a character, character trait, setting, and plot as the launching place for a zany (or serious) story. Mixing and matching elements of a story can unlock creativity and open the door for some fun writing experiences.

5. Give topic options and choices.

Encourage students to write about favorite, familiar topics—dogs, ballet, skateboarding, Legos, karate, etc. The more they enjoy the subject matter, the more vested they’ll be in the writing project.

6. Start with a personal experience or familiar story.

It can make an excellent foundation for a new story. Your children don’t always have to come up with something unique—it’s totally fine for them to retell a fable, fairytale, folktale, or other familiar story in their own words.

7. Provide a photo.

Pictures—especially those that “speak a thousand words”—make great prompts for generating story or narrative ideas. When searching for photos online, you’ll want to preview sites for appropriate content. That said, consider finding inspiration from one of these:

• National Geographic Photography 
• 30 Examples of Perfectly Timed Action Photography
• Stunning Photographs with Meaning

8. Do some or all of the writing.

By the time a thought makes its way from brain to hand to paper, the reluctant or learning-challenged student has lost her grasp on the idea, and it simply drifts away. Letting her dictate allows you to capture those words before they dissipate. Then, once they’re written, she can more easily rearrange and modify.

9. Encourage a “rough draft” mindset.

Students who think their first draft should be perfect can gain a lot from adjusting their thinking. Writing is a debugging process. Starting sloppy deals a blow to the blank page as the student plays with early ideas and gets into the writing flow. As author and poet Margaret Atwood so aptly put it: “If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.”

Quick! Take this survey:

1. Do your students complain about having to edit and revise their compositions and essays?
2. Do they hate having to spend several days on the same writing topic (brainstorming, writing a draft, self-editing, and revising)?
3. Do they become apathetic and lose steam by the time they get to the final draft?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, I have good news: Your kids are completely normal! But short of dragging them across broken glass or hot coals, how can you teach them to embrace the steps of the process as a natural, expected part of writing? 

Writing Is Hard Work

If you’ve not used a formal writing program before, it’s possible that the writing process is new to your children. Regardless, they’re not alone. I wish there were a magic wand I could wave over them to help them like it better, but in truth, writing is hard work, and it takes time and discipline. 

Unless they’re making lists, journaling, or emailing a friend, most writing does require planning, drafting, editing, and revising. This would be true whether you use WriteShop, some other writing program, or simply create your own writing assignments.

Typically, students want to write a paper once and be done with it. They don’t want to brainstorm, and they certainly don’t want to rewrite it. But whether or not these steps of the writing process are built into the curriculum (as they are with WriteShop), it’s really important for children to come to terms with the reality that this is how writers—from students to professional authors—write.

A Look at the Writing Process

There are three main parts of the writing process: brainstorming, writing, and editing and revising.

Brainstorming

The student who just sits down to write without having first brainstormed will either stare at the page with a blank look, unable to think of anything, or she’ll write in a fairly disorganized fashion, repeat herself, include unnecessary detail, or omit key ideas. Even in timed-writing sessions, students are encouraged to dash out a quick outline to help them focus on what the question is asking and to keep them from drifting off-topic as they write. Simply, brainstorming focuses a writer. It helps her choose details, plan and organize her story or report, stay on track, and avoid tangents. 

Writing

Writing is done in stages. The first draft serves to get those rough, new ideas onto the paper. By its very design, the first draft is meant to be revised later.

Editing and revising

Whether or not your child agrees, every paper benefits from revision, and editing gives her a chance to make some modifications. Even this blog article was edited and revised many times before I posted it. I don’t just try to catch typos; I also want to make sure my answers are complete and clear, my thoughts are organized, and my tone is professional yet conversational. This self-editing process tends to be subjective for most of us because we feel an emotional attachment to each and every word. That’s exactly why your child needs to turn her work in to you for objective feedback: She needs an outside opinion in order to write a more polished final draft  

Helping Your Student “Get It”

OK. You and I agree that the writing process is important. Yet the $20,000 question remains: How do we get our kids on board? Again, there are no magic answers, but I can offer a few ideas:

Show your teen she’s not alone.

Your student may feel as though she’s the only one who has to plan, write, and revise her compositions. Discovering that the writing process is universal may help her back down a bit. For fun, you might ask her to do a Google search for the term “writing process.” I bet she’ll be surprised to find over 21 million results!

Give freedom to a creative child.

It’s natural to expect a negative response from a reluctant, resistant writer. But if a student who normally loves writing fits this profile too, maybe she feels her creativity is being stifled when she is asked to brainstorm or make changes to her text.

First and foremost, give such a student the freedom to write for the sheer joy of writing—plays, stories, poems, whatever she loves! Separate these experiences from her writing lesson by not requiring her to plan or revise these stories. For her, use the writing process to teach skills in the same way that math drills, piano lessons, or other repetitive activities teach, reinforce, and offer practice. Let her write to her heart’s delight in her free time, but also require her to learn discipline through the structure of the writing process.

Use analogies.

As a parent, I’m sure all this makes sense to you. The hard part is communicating it to your student. I find that analogies can help explain things so that she can get it too. Here are some past blog articles that deal with the writing process. Several offer different analogies that compare the writing process with things like gardening, cooking, scrapbooking, and spelunking (caving). See if one or two of these analogies spark understanding in your reluctant student. 

• Your child’s writing: Garden or weed patch?
• What’s your favorite part of writing?
• News flash! Kids hate to self edit
• 6 simple truths  
• How is a writer like a spelunker?
• 10 stumbling blocks to writing (11-part series)

Point to the future.

Students who choose to go to college quickly discover that the writing process is taught there as well. And as much as they may grumble and complain, it’s to their benefit to plan, draft, and improve each piece of writing.

Among curriculum sites, public schools, universities, and professional writers’ blogs and websites, the writing process is regarded as key to success. To help your teen see how vital these repetitive skills are, even at the college and professional level, here are a couple of outside sources that further explain the purpose and various stages of the writing process.

• Links to dozens of university writing center websites
• The Writing Process  
• Effective Business Writing: The Writing Process

Start Young

In the end, there’s no shortcut to bypass the writing process. Planning and revising are as important to a composition or essay’s success as the actual writing. The best way to avoid arguments, head-butting, and apathy is to train your children while they’re young, perhaps using a program like WriteShop Primary (or the upcoming WriteShop Junior). If they grow up with the writing process, they’ll be more likely to accept and value it, even if they never learn to love it.

Copyright 2011 © Kim Kautzer. All rights reserved.

You’re in good company if you think teaching writing is downright painful. Many homeschooling moms feel completely inadequate and unequipped for the task. As a matter of fact, if I were to take a poll, most of you would probably say you’d rather have a root canal.

Sometime we dream about how nice it would be just to plunk a workbook down if front of our kids and watch clear, engaging, organized stories and essays take shape before our very eyes. But in reality, writing needs to be taught.

Yes, a handful of us have children who will figure it out all on their own, but most children need modeling, teaching, and feedback in order to learn and improve as writers.

Beyond your own self-doubt, you may be struggling to help your kids overcome issues like writer’s block, laziness, perfectionism, or other hurdles that prevent progress. Most students want to scribble out a paper and call it done. Then they want you to rave over it! But at the first sign of a suggestion from you, watch out—here comes the meltdown!

This creates tremendous frustration for the parent because you can’t seem to figure out how to make this whole writing thing work. Your kid is a mess, and you feel like a failure.

Isolate the Source

Kid Issues

• Does your child complain that he can’t think of what to write about?
• Does he dawdle?
• Does he have learning challenges that may require special attention?
• Is he unwilling to take correction or accept feedback?

Mom Issues 

• Do you feel overwhelmed?
• Are you trying to teach many children at different levels?
• Are you disorganized and flying by the seat of your pants?
• Are you unpredictable in your editing and grading?

Alone or in combination, these factors can contribute to incredible stress, irritation, and discouragement.

Make Simple Changes

You can take small steps toward reducing the level of frustration in your home. These ideas work wonders with all types of learners:

1. Keep writing assignments short and specific.
2. Use brainstorming worksheets and graphic organizers to help your child think his ideas through before he begins to write.
3. Break the assignment into bite-sized chunks, giving mini deadlines along the way.
4. Choose writing materials that are flexible enough to use with several children at once.
5. Have a plan: Know what you want to teach and when, and then schedule writing into your week. 
6. Use objective, lesson-specific editing and grading tools to help you evaluate your children’s writing fairly.

Small successes will begin to usher frustration right out the door, leaving encouragement and accomplishment in its wake!

Copyright 2010 © Kim Kautzer. All rights reserved.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve looked at basic writing stages of K-2nd graders and 3rd-5th graders.

The middle school years—typically 5th-8th grade—are the time to reinforce and build on previously-learned writing concepts. Motivated or advanced children will be able to take their current writing skills to a new level, while reluctant or resistant children, or those who lack fundamental writing skills, may need to go back to basics.

Use these middle-school years to make sure the foundation is strong. This is the time to work on:

• Writing complete and more complex sentences.
• Writing a well-developed paragraph.
• Improving grammar, punctuation, and capitalization.

How Much and How Often?

Provide your middle schoolers with a steady diet of writing activities. 

• Have them write 3-4 days a week.
• Aim for 8-15 writing projects per year (1-2 each month), meaning paragraphs and short reports that go through all the paces of the writing process.
• Tuck in other writing activities along the way—such as book reports, journal writing, and current events—that don’t require revisions.
• Spend no more than 45-60 minutes per writing day. Consider both the assignment itself as well as your child’s age and attention span.
• Students should primarily write 1- to 5-paragraph compositions and occasionally 1- to 2-page reports.

Become a Purposefully Involved Parent

During middle school, students should begin taking more responsibility for their own learning. At the same time, parents need to be purposefully and consistently involved. Though it’s tempting to let your child work independently, this isn’t the time to jump ship and abdicate your role as primary teacher. This means:

• Overseeing and supervising daily writing.
• Setting a pace for assignment completion so your child stays on task.
• Reading and commenting on each writing assignment to show that you’re interested and that you care.
• Promptly editing and returning work to keep your child from falling behind.

Also see Helping Your Highschooler with Writing

Copyright 2010 © Kim Kautzer. All rights reserved.

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In Spring 2011, WriteShop will introduce WriteShop Junior Book D, the first in a series of writing curricula for middle and upper elementary ages. To be among the first to get the scoop about the book’s release, join our mailing list by visiting www.writeshop.com and looking for the newsletter sign-up box.

Children in grades 6-8 can also begin using WriteShop I, a great program for teaching and reinforcing the steps of the writing process. Parent supervision is a key element of the program as you learn to equip and inspire successful writers.