Home-School Connection:

Promoting Writers

LC K-5: Launa Kruithof

How can we help our children with writing in the intermediate

grades?

Quick-write

Open up your writer’s notebook to a new blank page. Write today’s date. I’m going to read a poem to you and then I’m going to ask you to write. I want you to just write, try to keep your hand moving, and don’t worry about the mechanics. Try to fill the page.

I Need to Find a Place

I need to find a place

Where friendship never burns out.

I need to find a place

Where I can scream and shout.

I need to find a place

Where love is forever

Where you don’t give up – never!

I need to find a place

That is comforting and calm.

A place – where nothing goes wrong.

-Emily G.(100 Quickwrites by Linda Rief)

What does the research say?

• 70% of students in grades 4 –12 are low-achieving writers (Persky et al., 2003).

• Every year in the United States large numbers of adolescents graduate from high school unable to write at the basic levels required by colleges or employers (Alliance for Excellent Education, 2006).

What can YOU do?

• Make writing fun! Don’t make it a chore.• Show your child that YOU are a writer• Set aside a time to write together• Find a place in the home to keep writing

supplies• Is there a place in the home where you

can write together?

• Listen to soothing music when you write in a quiet atmosphere

• Be encouraging• Give them praise for what they did well as

a writer• Find writing opportunities at home and for

different reasons

• Have a conversation about your writing before you writeAsk questions- make it a conversation not an

interrogationWhat did you hear? see? taste? feel? smell?Who was with you?What happened first? After that? At the end?Tell me more.

• Focus on the ideas in the writing not the mechanicsKeep the flow of writing goingDon’t critique every error Help them think about capitalization and

punctuationSpelling: “Say the word slowly and write the

sounds you hear.”Teach them to circle words that they are

unsure about and show them how to use tools to help them.

What can we write about?

• Anything!• Make it authentic:

ListsThank you notesLetters InvitationsLeave a message for

someoneNewspaper articleFlyers

Keep a Writer’s Notebook

• Collection of thoughts

• Be an observer• Make lists• Quick-writes• Reviews of movies

& books• Feelings• Memories

Questions/ Comments?

• What’s next?• What would you want to see in future

workshops?• Would you be interested in workshops to

write side-by-side with your child?

Resources

• National Writing Project:

http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/doc/resources/encourage_writing.csp• Scholastic:

http://www.scholastic.com/parents/• National Council of Teachers of English:

http://www.ncte.org/positions/statements/howtohelpenglish