11 Ideas for Getting Kids to Write
Parents know that they should read to their children, sign them up at the library, and occasionally wrestle the remote control or joystick from their hands and replace it with a book. But reading isn't the only thing that's fundamental.
The other side of literacy is writing, and that's where many parents and their kids fall short. Only about 25 percent of America's kids are considered proficient writers--able to write at their appropriate grade level--and just one percent are advanced writers, according to the latest results of the National Assessment in Writing, which was administered to grades 4, 8, and 12 by the United States Department of Education. The truth is, education experts say, most kids barely write above a basic level.
It would be easy to blame television, video games, the Internet, and cheap phone rates, which have made letter writing a lost art. While these factors contribute to a lack of writing literacy, the fact is that many adults don?t know how to teach writing to their kids or to encourage it at home. Or they might be insecure about their own writing, passing that unease onto their children. And there are plenty of young people who simply regard writing as difficult and dull, something akin to punishment.
What children need most from parents are not rules of grammar or how to write a topic sentence for a school essay, but simple encouragement to write and write often. Like carpentry, writing is a craft; the more you do it, the easier and better you get. And kids do need to get better at it. Writing effectively, after all, is a necessary skill, whether your kids need to compose an essay answer on a college exam or want to write an effective memo or report at a future job. Here are some ways suggested by educators, writers, teachers, and parents to make writing as natural as reading around your home.
