Teaching Writing

Learning to Write is the inverse of reading, where fine motor agility, sound/spelling connections, vocabulary banks, and sentence sense must come together in the early grades to lend “voice” to our ideas in written form, even though they are 1-4 sentences in length in 1st grade.

As we grow older, a wealth of sub-skills must be in place in order to express clear thoughts and feelings. Just like reading is an active - rather than a passive - process, writing requires keen attention to internal self-talk, and the nuances of the English language. Keeping in mind the overall message of what you are writing and the audience you are writing for, while tackling syntax, spelling, best word choice, and the flow from sentence to sentence, is a multi-layered undertaking for many children and adults. Skilled and fluid writers manage this multi-layered task with internal dialogue, moving backward and forward through the piece, and re-reading so efficiently that they cannot feel themselves revisiting a sentence several times over.

If children are to become problem solvers in the act of writing, they need to see the process modeled by a competent adult, which demystifies the process. They must be given individualized monitoring tools and internal “scripts” in order to expand their tool kit of writing strategies, and improve their stamina and sophistication as writers.