5 Tips for Building Writing Skills at Home

By: Kenneth Lini Tuesday March 29, 2016 comments Tags: writing, building writing skills

What your kids learn when they are at home is just as important as what they learn each day inside the classroom. These five tips for how to improve writing skills will help you when helping your child improve their writing skills at home.

Tip #1: Make Writing Fun

When working to build your child's writing skills, it should never be a "chore," or else they may start hating it. Inspire your budding writer by setting up a writing corner in your home. Provide many different types of paper to choose from—notebook paper, colorful stationary, small cards, journals, and more. Fill a cup with pens in every color. Having the proper tools and accessories can make the process fun and enjoyable for your child, which in turn makes them more motivated to write.

Tip #2: Practice Writing Every Day

Regular practice is essential for building writing skills. Designate a small portion of each day as "writing time." Maintaining a personal journal, writing a book, or sending letters to pen pals are two excellent ideas for ongoing writing practice.

Tip #3: Spend Time Reading Daily Too

Reading is how to improve writing skills without actually writing. By reading what others have wrote, your child will observe a wide variety of sentence constructions, vocabulary, paragraph constructions, and more. These observations then influence how your child presents their own thoughts and ideas when writing. Make sure your child has access to a wide selection of literature appropriate for their reading level to enjoy and explore each day.

Tip #4: Use Reading and Writing Learning Apps

Writing may traditionally be done with paper and pencil, but technology has introduced new and exciting ways for children to write. Educational apps are an excellent resource to incorporate in your child's writing practice. WordParts is an app that helps children learn the parts of speech by visually teaching how they function in sentences. Apps like WordParts make the learning process so much fun that your child will learn how to improve writing skills without even realizing it.

Tip #5: Read Examples of "Good Writing"

Reading exemplary pieces of "good writing" helps students improve their own writing skills. The app WordParts can help students analyze these samples of good writing. It allows them to modify texts by adding shapes behind the words or color to the paragraphs' text. Known as "Color and Teach Writing," this system provides the same advantages of using 3D manipulative shapes with the convenience of an app.

About the Author: Kenneth Lini

My goal is to develop an innovative methodology that will help children learn to write and communicate more effectively.

I have a passion for technology and want to use that passion to provide new hardware and software tools to help children learn English Language Structure, i.e. grammar. I get excited to think our products can help children and give them collaboration skills that they can use for the rest of their lives.