Helping Students to Excel in Writing
Getting students to write is a big challenge for teachers all around the globe. Kids find it challenging to write what’s on their mind. As a teacher, you have a huge role in helping them excel in writing. Writing is a skill that’s essential to have for any functional adult. Even when none of your students aspire to be novel writers or journalists, improving their writing skills is still a worthwhile investment.
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Helping Students to Excel in Writing
Boosting your students writing aptitude is not going to be easy. We understand that. To help you out, we’ve compiled these 4 tips. They will help you to motivate students to write more and improve their writing skills along the way.
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Provide Instructions
Telling the students to write whatever they have in mind is good and all, but it’s next to useless in the real world. Students will start chattering among themselves wondering what should they write about. Instead, give clear instructions on what they must write and how they should do it.
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For instance, tell them to describe their day in three paragraphs and use at most five adverbs. Another idea is to encourage them to post to their social media account daily using proper grammar. People tend to be sloppy with their spelling and grammar when posting on social media. Let your kids blow the wind of change.
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Make them read
Good writers read a lot, so give students a list of books to read and ask them to learn about the style and choice of words. Reading broadens one’s mind. By reading the work of various writers, students can expose themselves to various writing styles and techniques.
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As an exercise, ask the student to write a short paragraph mimicking the style of the book they just read. Copying a famous writer’s style is a fun way to improve students’ writing skill.
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Practice, practice, practice
Practice is not about achieving perfection. You’ll never be a perfect writer and neither will your students. Practice is about getting better and one-upping yourself.
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Practicing doesn’t always mean writing a complete story or essay. Just write a paragraph or a sentence showing the difference between me, myself, and I. You could also ask them to write a simple thank you message for the bus drivers, janitors, friends, teachers, or parents. Make them write various passages to hone their writing skills.
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Provide feedback
How would your students know they’re on the right track if you keep silent? Provide positive feedbacks with tips for each student. This is quite a job as each student will stumble upon different problems in the process, but that’s just part of teaching.
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One type of feedback that most students need is in the spelling and grammar area. If you feel overwhelmed when correcting everyone’s grammar mistakes, point them to online-spellcheck.com so they can weed out their spelling errors on their own. Now you only need to check the things that machines can’t pick up such as their use of verb, transition, vocabulary, and the clarity of their writing.
