8 Tips for Writing Skills

Extracted from the Schools A to Z Website

Use these practical tips to help your child to work out the best way to express themselves through their writing.

1. Help your child to understand writing tasks that they may have been given for homework. Ask them to talk about what has to be done.
2. Help your child to use reference materials such as dictionaries, thesauruses, encyclopaedias, CD-ROMs and the internet.
3. Before your child attempts a task, help them to understand what reference materials are needed by talking about the task and asking questions which will guide the child's planning.
4. Draw your child's attention to technical words in writing and discuss their meaning or look them up together in a dictionary.
5. Help your child to understand and use information in graphs, diagrams and pictures when they are researching a writing task.
6. Encourage your child to use different types of paper for drawing and writing and to use pens, pencils, crayons and markers.
7. If you have a computer at home, help your child to use it to present their writing task.
8. If your child is having difficulty with homework, talk with their teacher.