Do your students enjoy – or dread – the writing process? Today, a writing readiness foundation and practical ideas for recapturing writing joy in the lives of learners who would rather have teeth slowly and painfully pulled than craft one... simple...beautiful...sentence.

Creating a Writing Readiness Foundation

Create a writing readiness foundation brick by brick, one layer at a time. Build a strong substructure during the early years, with blocks of storytelling, reading, listening, grammar and writing basics. As learners develop academically and holistically, overlay additional, more complex structures on top of their fundamental writing pillars. 

“You can have the best ideas in the world, but if you cannot communicate them clearly and concisely to others in a way that they understand and appreciate, your ideas won’t go very far.” 
(Me (repetitively!), explaining to my children the importance of learning to write well)

Writing Cornerstones & Activities: Preschool & Kindergarten 

Writing Cornerstones

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Listen to the classics read aloud, foster a love for storytelling & reading, and introduce basic writing skills.
a book shelf filled with lots of books
Photo by Geoff Oliver / Unsplash

Activities

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Letter formation – Learn to recognize and write alphabet letters and simple words.
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Drawing and oral narration – Encourage students to draw pictures and orally narrate, “the story of their picture.” Alternatively, modify this activity for car commuting by asking learners to tell the story of something fun or interesting that happened yesterday. Assist little ones in remembering appropriate events to relate.
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Simple sentence construction – Help students create and write one or two short, simple sentences based on their drawings or experiences.
boy sitting on bench while holding a book
Photo by Ben White / Unsplash

Fun Twists! Writing Games & Guidance

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Story Stones – Use painted rocks with pictures (like animals or objects) to inspire storytelling.
blue and white happy birthday print stone
Photo by Nick Fewings / Unsplash
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Individual or Interactive Journals – Students share a journal (or use individual ones) to draw a picture and dictate a sentence or two about their drawing.
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Letter Hunts – Hide alphabet cards throughout the learning environment. Children go on a “letter hunt,” then write words or sentences incorporating the found letters.

Writing Cornerstones & Activities: Grades 1-2 

Writing Cornerstones

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Highlight reading, listening to the classics read aloud and grammar basics. Reading & writing focus on learner-chosen topics.
woman wearing pink shirt in front of bookshelf
Photo by Rabie Madaci / Unsplash

Activities

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Grammar Basics – Use a solid grammar curricula like Rod & Staff English 2 – Preparing to Build to teach grammar basics. Keep lessons concise and do them aloud together, instead of having learners write out laborious exercises.
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Sentence Speaking & Writing – Focus on speaking complete sentences first. Then, teach students to construct complete, simple sentences with proper punctuation. Do not hesitate to correct learners’ written errors on their papers. 

Fun Twists! Writing Games & Guidance

At this age, learners will normally require assistance with the following activities. Be patient. Come alongside them. Remember the goal is to lay a strong writing readiness foundation and create joy in the writing process. Do not expect them to be naturally independent writers in these early grades. 
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Story Starters – Provide sentence starters or story prompts on colorful cards. Have learners draw them randomly or choose their desired topic. Stories can be told aloud and written. 
a person writing on a notebook with a pen
Photo by Markus Spiske / Unsplash
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“School” Newspaper – Create a simple “classroom” newspaper with student-written sections…jokes, weather, sports, etc.
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Publish Your Own Picture Books – Learners write and illustrate their own picture books, then read them aloud to classmates and families.

Writing Cornerstones & Activities: Grades 3-5 

woman reading book while sitting on chair
Photo by Alexis Brown / Unsplash

Writing Cornerstones

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Develop more complex writing skills & foster increased writing independence.

Activities

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How to Write One Good Paragraph – Step by step, teach students to organize ideas into a five-sentence paragraph with a topic sentence, three supporting details and a closing summary sentence. 
a blue sign that says one on it
Photo by Nick Fewings / Unsplash

As learners’ writing readiness foundations strengthen, focus on writing single, strong paragraphs, instead of jumping into multiple-paragraph assignments. Spend a solid year or two concentrating on solitary paragraph mastery, with increasingly complex sentence and vocabulary selections. Teach them to use a dictionary and a thesaurus. Paragraph quantity is not important at this juncture. If learners can write one excellent paragraph, writing a five or ten paragraph essay in the future will not be a problem.

Teach them to paint word pictures and ideas, appreciating the beauty of language and the written word.
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Allow students to choose areas within subjects that most interest them. For example, if my children’s lesson was to write a science or history paragraph, I would allow them to choose an intriguing topic within the defined subject area to write about, instead of forcing them to write about a topic that did not pique their natural curiosity. 

Fun Twists! Writing Games & Guidance

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Write Your Own Stories – Combine productive creative writing time with learning to use a word processor. 
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Author's Chair – Design an "Author's Chair" where learners can read aloud to each other or share their writing with small groups.
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Role Writing – Learners choose the role of explorer or detective and write one paragraph from that perspective. 

Children who learn to read well, master grammar and have classic stories read aloud to them from a young age are poised to become strong, confident writers. Create a rich writing readiness foundation and motivate your learners by infusing creativity, imagination, and playfulness into writing lessons. Move at each child’s pace, concentrate on topics that pique their interest and be positive! Your learners will absorb your positivity and joy like a plant absorbs water from the soil.

Daring to Dream Beyond the Classroom?

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