How to Help Your First Grader Become a Better Writer
Writers, even at the first-grade level, need the skills to do the physical writing and the creative tools to imagine content for the written piece. Your young wordsmith needs to feel comfortable describing his world and confident in his basic skills to complete the task. You can help her develop writing skills and also fuel her imagination to create by exposing your child to the diverse world community. Your child can help you prepare some of the writing tools. This sharing helps give her personal experience to use in her writing portfolio.
Things You'll Need
- Craft paper
- Elementary-lined writing paper
- Picture books
- Read aloud books
- Writing paper and wide-grip pencils
- Vocabulary tags
- Magazines
- Scissors
- Construction paper
- Glue or tape
Instructions
Develop your child's vocabulary by talking to her about words and introduce a collection of new words each week. Make a list of the new words and place it in a public place in your home, such as the front of the refrigerator or a bulletin board. Use a word a day from the list and encourage your child to use the word appropriately in her conversation. Focus on only seven words for the week and select words that have something to do with family activities. Vocabulary work, according to Scholastic, also helps your child learn spelling skills. Encourage reading activities by taking your first grader to the library to select reading books for the week. Ask her to bring home books she enjoys from the school library to share with family members. Select descriptive language from the book and talk about the emotions and feelings the words represent to the reader. Read aloud to your child before bedtime from books that use language in a creative way that sparks your child's imagination and interest. Read with enthusiasm and use different voices and gestures for each character. Look at picture books together and ask your first grader what words she'd use to describe the pictures in the text. Visit cultural sites and participate in multicultural community experiences. Expand your child's view of the world by exposing her to different cultures and a variety of different ideas and viewpoints. This helps her develop opinions and feelings to draw from in writing. It's difficult for first-grade students to write when the child has nothing to say. Decorate your home and car with vocabulary tags and ask your first grader to create a written story using some of the identification tags. Place tags on furniture items and things used every day by the child and the family. Select age-appropriate words and talk about the meanings. Ask your child to sit down with paper and pencil and create a story using a few of the vocabulary words listed on the tags. Create a collection of photograph story starters with your child's help. Ask her to sit down with you to cut interesting photographs from magazines and glue these to larger pieces of bright-colored construction paper. Select photos with people doing activities so that your child can develop a narrative describing the action happening in the image. Use the images to help her write stories with a plot and also to write character descriptions for the people in the photos.
