Modern Learning: How to Teach Our Kids to Write?

Interesting Tips on Why Kids Can’t Write

How often do you think about the fact that education in your country requires changes? How often are you dissatisfied with the quality of education of your child? Teachers from various schools in Manhattan recently gathered about this in one of the bookstores. They held a conference, during which they wanted to reveal the main reasons why it is difficult for modern children to write. Also, the most recent facts about education, several different education systems, as well as other social and financial aspects were discussed. The results turned out to be slightly obvious, but they will serve as a great value for those who are interested in the education of their children.

One morning in July, several dozen teachers from different schools gathered in the conference room to solve one important problem. And this problem really sounds tough: why children can’t write well. The conference was attended not only by teachers but also by very representative persons, such as Dr. Judith C. Hochman, the founder of an organization called the Writing Revolution. At the discussion, she clearly stated that the main thing in writing is the sentence. Well, she is right, the good text is built from the right sentences. But is it important to focus on grammar? What are other ways to help your child learn how to write correctly?

Let us give another example. Meredith Wanzer, a high school teacher and instructor from Nassau Community College, conducted an interesting seminar. She planned to teach six teenage girls to write a quality essay about entering college. We all know that this type of essay is not easy and that it requires proper preparation and a lot of creativity. This type of essay allows you to reveal all the strengths and weaknesses of the author, learn about his preferences, personal life, talent and so on.

So, the way that Ms. Wanzer suggested, is called freewriting. This is a popular English method of writing an essay, when the author continuously writes all his thoughts on paper, without fixing or stopping. According to Ms. Wanzer, this method allows writing a very emotional paper with the most genuine thoughts. But when the experiment ended, it was clear that not all the girls managed to cope with the task. Simply a lack of personality in their essays prevented the creation of readable and unique texts.

Dr. Hochman explained this as follows. Freewriting is a miserable and ineffective way to find inspiration for an essay. According to her, children write too much information from personal experience, which makes their text too “personal”, that is, simple monologues. Therefore, not everyone in the world can find this technique useful.

Official Facts about the Modern Education: Is It Possible to Teach Children to Write?

Did you know that a third of both 12th and 8th graders do not know how to write normally? This is the latest data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Teachers are shocked by the lack of education of students. But in fact, according to experts, it is teachers who are to blame for this situation. Yes, yes, almost half of all teachers of their different schools lack experience in teaching children. They have learned to read and write, they can conduct classes, but they have not yet learned how to teach children effective and modern methods. According to statistics, only 55 percent of teachers can well educate your child.

Many teachers are now arguing among themselves about which method of teaching children to write is the best. Unfortunately, a consensus has not been reached yet, because different people with different backgrounds offer completely different ways of teaching the child how to read and write. Some say that grammar is the most important thing in writing and nothing can replace it. Others argue that the lack of children’s desire depends on the teacher’s wrong learning approach. Another group of people and also Dr. Hochman is convinced that attention should first be paid to suggestions, adverbs, correct punctuation and so on.

In addition, now we have an era of innovative technologies and it would be nice to fit something worthwhile from this area to improve education. So what can we do to teach children to write excellent essays?

Practical Ways to Teach Kids to Write

You probably already understood that today teachers do not have enough experience to properly teach children? Well, we need to conduct research, ask the children what they like and what they don’t like, and also practice as much as possible. Moreover, if the teachers and parents of their students unite and do their best, they will be able to create the most effective education system in the world.

Well, what are the main ways to teach a student to write an essay?

1. Grammar is essential, but practice is more effective.

Paying attention to grammar is always useful and necessary. But the child should not be tangled with all grammatical constructions, as they can prevent him from revealing himself and writing an essay from the heart. Just ask your child to spread his/her thoughts every day on a paper. The quantity is over quality in this case. For a while, the child will forget about any difficulties in writing or searching for inspiration.

2. Inspire your kids with technology.

Modern children use gadgets better than any representative of the previous generation. They like nobody quickly text messages and communicate with different people from all over the world. However, they may not know how to write a great and informative essay. Therefore, dear teachers, do not forbid your students to use modern gadgets, but rather vice versa. Show them how special websites or applications improve or even facilitate their learning. You’ll see, soon they will impress you with very fascinating ideas!

3. Mix everything well.

As mentioned earlier in the article, teachers argued about what is more important, grammar, good structure or creativity in writing essays. And what do you think, what is the answer? Correctly, all these are elements of a whole. If you learn how to connect all these three things, you can already learn how to write masterpieces in a couple of days. The main thing is to let the children go beyond their own boundaries and create original content from the heart.