Please help me teach my fourth grader how to write well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Rather than drilling and killing her, have her read whatever she's interested in. The more she enjoys reading, the better her writing will become. Really.

DP. Many many studies have shown the above does NOT work. Go listen to the "Sold a story" podcast.

New poster. Without even reading the research on this, I can fully agree with the pps. Reading alone does not a good writer make. Same as knowing your math facts/fundamentals is key for being really good at math.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Using the Killgallon method via sentence composing, mimicking and imitation is key. Building sentence sense via a linguistics lense (syntax trees) and building complexity will do wonders for your child's writing.

Can you please suggest what workbooks to buy? English is not my native language and I do not know where to start. My child is 9.

[Anonymous]

One important aspect of becoming a better writer is having lots of opportunities to do it. The limited time and assignments in school won't cut it. If your child is willing to try writing in a journal, that's one avenue. I'd also suggest you start creating a "family scrapbook"--print out pictures of recent events and have them write a paragraph or more explaining what happened.

At the 4th grade age, challenges include simple sentences, repeated sentence structure, and limited details. Many kids who work on more complex sentences end up jumbling them so the syntax is off. Having them write, edit, and read their pieces aloud to go through drafts before putting a final copy in the scrapbook is great practice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Rather than drilling and killing her, have her read whatever she's interested in. The more she enjoys reading, the better her writing will become. Really.

Also the more you write the better you get. I remember being so intimidated when I went back to work after 15 years and had to write quite a bit. I got comfortable after awhile and enjoyed it. I no longer work outside of the home and am losing the skill again.

At that age my son’s learning disability got in the way of his physically writing because of OT problems. He was able to use a scribe to do short stories. He was able to use his wit to write mundane short stories that were really clever. Maybe you can do something fun like write secret funny paragraphs to each other and hide them. Something to get her comfortable with writing more and more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a fourth grader who has always been a strong student who worked hard at school, but I am concerned because she writes very poorly and hasn't improved much over the past couple of years. She reads voraciously and most of what she reads is written well, but it doesn't seem to help her writing at all. Her school used a balance literacy approach and heavily relied on computers for ELA and I think it just didn't work for her. What are some ways that I can help her with spelling, syntax, and grammar? Any recommendations for resources such as workbooks that work well? We can't afford tutoring right now and I don't have a teaching background myself, so I'm hoping to find a structured approach that I can follow to help her improve.

Read older authors such as Edgar Rice Burroughs if she likes science fiction stories. Very formally written.

Mostly though just get her interested in writing fiction stories of any genre. The more she writes, the better she will become and find her voice so to speak. Her style of writing.

[Anonymous]

I teach writing to students with learning disabilities. We practice using different writing strategies, like sentence combining and sentence expansion. We outline paragraphs together using graphic organizers. We don’t just hand kids blank sheets of paper because they’re not there yet until they’ve internalized the strategies. We model a lot of grammatically accurate writing for the kids and ask them to copy it down. If they can come up with the content, organize it for them and give them practice that way.

[Anonymous]

OP, if your daughter is having trouble spelling simple one syllable words with vowel teams (words like meat, floor, spoil, please, flew) - I recommend you get this workbook and work together with her to do the activities.

https://shop.sharpen.com/?_gl=1*7a2ujk*_gcl_au*MTA1Mzk5MjU3MS4xNzMyNjc0Mzg4*_ga*MTkwMjg4NTQ0LjE3MjkxMTUyMzQ.*_ga_FZVEBN77BS*MTczMjY3NDM4OC4xLjAuMTczMjY3NDM4OS41OS4wLjA.


Level B1 would be the level to work on the types of words I listed. If she has tthose spellings mastered, but needs work with words like ledge, piece, sketch. workbook B2 would be appropriate.

Both workbooks organize spelling lists by sound. The sound of /long o/ can be spelled oa, o-e, oe, ough, ow, oa. There are many activities to help master the spellings of different words. There are also sentences to read. I always have the students read the sentences, and then I have them write the sentences to my dictation. My goal is 10 sentences in 10 minutes. By the end of the workbook, they have covered 12 sounds, and written 120 sentences to dictation. They are usually quite proficient at writing by that point, because now they can actually spell any word that they can say! Maybe they don't quite spell all the words correctly, but at least the spell them in a phonetically sensible way.

[Anonymous]

Writing composition is different than handwriting which is different than spelling or grammar. You need to focus on one thing at a time. If the child can come up with a sentence and write it down in their own, then you look for spelling issues or things like not using capitalization or punctuation correctly. Choose one rule and practice it, like using commas in a series. That kind of thing can be practiced with workbooks.

Spelling is another issue.

Writing simple sentences needs to progress to more complex sentences that include detail.

For organizing writing, teaching the child to outline is very helpful. Once they can write sentences, work on paragraphs, with a topic sentence, supporting details, and a conclusion. From there you move to a topic, several supporting ideas that each take a paragraph to explain, and then a conclusion.

Teach your child to make notes in outline form before starting.

Many kids and adults now seem to struggle with writing in complete sentences. They write in sentence fragments, or write in run-ons.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Using the Killgallon method via sentence composing, mimicking and imitation is key. Building sentence sense via a linguistics lense (syntax trees) and building complexity will do wonders for your child's writing.

Can you please suggest what workbooks to buy? English is not my native language and I do not know where to start. My child is 9.

https://www.heinemann.com/products/E09230.aspx

https://www.heinemann.com/products/E01246.aspx

https://www.heinemann.com/products/E00223.aspx