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WRITING: Top 5 Tips For Any Grade

Welcome to a new series on the blog about everyday strategies you can do at home to help your own child or your students to succeed in specific academic areas. This week's plug is for WRITING.

I often get asked by parents if I could tutor their child in the writing process. More often than not, the student's needs are organizing their thoughts. Hopefully, your child is familiar with the writing process from school. If they are very young, then chances are they may know just a little bit about it.

Children usually think the writing process is a punishment. Teaching first grade I often get asked by the students...Do I have to do a sloppy copy if I do it just perfect the first time? Yes, darling, I am trying to teach you the writing process.

Here are a few ways to avoid the tears and frustration with the writing process. You may want to implement all of these techniques or you may just pick and choose what you need for your child depending on what is expected for their writing assignment.

1. Thinking Map: Thinking maps, or sometimes called Bubble maps, are useful for brainstorming at the beginning of the writing process. What thoughts are they trying to convey? What do they even want to write about? Do they have a bunch of thoughts swarming in their head...let them pour them out onto a thinking map.
2. Writing Map: You can find an abundance of maps on the web, just like the thinking maps above. In fact, Pinterest has pages and pages of writing maps. You will need to know what type of writing in order to pick a map. For example, what is the craft or structure that is expected? Is your child writing a persuasive or opinion passage? Is your child writing a reflection or a narrative? Most teachers use writing maps in their classrooms, so chances are your child will be familiar with the layout. Writing maps are a great way to organize the thoughts from the thinking maps as well.
3. STICKY NOTES: If you know me well, you know I LOVE sticky notes. This is my favorite strategy for my students who have difficulty organizing thoughts and who look at a writing map and become overwhelmed. This is also a great strategy for younger students who hate to write. It really breaks it down. For this strategy, you need the large sticky notes that are the size of an index card. Each sticky is used for one sentence/ thought. The beauty of this strategy is that sticky notes can be moved and organized. A lot of times in this process a student will realize they don't need that piece of information they wrote about and can simply toss it...without the crazy amount of erasing and making a mess of their map. They can move around the sticky sentences as they are laid out on the table much easier. Your visual learner will like this. Your ADD/HD student will like being able to see one sentence at a time when it comes to organizing the writing. As they become more accustomed to this strategy they will start to write more than one sentence on a sticky, eventually not needing this strategy. Again, this is a favorite.
4. COPS: Teaching your child or student to stop and check for COPS is of immense help. COPS stands for Capitalization, Organization, Punctuation, Spelling. I stamp this on each journal page that my littles write on. I give all my tutoring students bookmarks with COPS to remind them to stop and check. This is a great tool for my students with dyslexia, dysgraphia, ADD/HD, and really anyone needing to slow down and look. Not only is this a great tool to display in the classroom, but one to keep at home and pull out for any written homework assignment. Asking your child "Did you check for COPS?" will build a good habit of checking their work. 
5. Take notes: Chances are at some point your child is doing a book report. Not a problem when the book is a picture book in the early years. You can glance at the book and help easily. How about those summer reading books? You know the chapter books that they are reading on their own. The one you have likely no idea what it's about, except what your child tells you. Well, here is a great way to help your child and avoid banging your head against the wall. Give your child a composition book. On one page have him/her list the characters as he meets them in their reading. Have them jot down traits as they come along next to the character. At the end of the chapter or chapters jot down a simple summary of one or two sentences. When the book is finished they have created an artifact that will help them answer most questions on book reports and should be easy to access. There is a learning curve and you may need to model this activity for your child. 

I hope you are able to glean some good ideas here the next time your child has a writing assignment or perhaps you're a classroom teacher who may see something here as a good strategy to help one of your littles. Leave me a comment if you do try one of these out or if you have any questions.