Request a CatalogContact Us
 0 Items
Home > Support > Curricula > Having trouble motivating student to write...
 
 
Question: My 5th grade daughter is very bright and a quick student, but I am having trouble motivating her to write unless it is in her journal, or a topic of her choice. I usually let her do this, but feel I am falling short of really helping her. I am going to order the Sentence Constructors just for the basics, and Writing Workshop 1 and 2 by Sandra Garant. Is there any help you can give me in how to start? Thank you very much for your time.
Answer:

Dear Parent,

That your daughter is willing to  write in her journal and on topics of her choice is great. Bright children realize that they put a lot of effort into writing assignments that don't serve their own purposes. Writing is a communication skill, and it is only one of several communication skills. Bright children often don't want to waste their time on what they may consider to be only busy work.

The Sentence Constructors workshop will be too simple for a fifth grader who likes to write on her own terms. I would skip that workshop and go to Workshop Level 1.

A second option would be to work through Creative Communications, which contains writing projects, as opposed to writing assignments. The idea behind these projects is to complete those that fit in with your daily life. Let your daughter review the projects and begin choosing those that appeal to her. Then you may want to choose one or two for her, explaining that she can make the writing her own. (More on that in the next paragraph.) These projects give children a chance to use their writing in real life situations, such as writing a script for an answering machine, keeping a calendar up-to-date, and creating family keepsakes. Creative Communications offers a special section for reluctant writers and is available from CHC.

Children who know how to write and don't want to do writing assignments need to learn how to make the writing their own. Most writing assignments can be tweaked by the way the child approaches the assignment. In fact, making an assignment their own inspires children to be more creative. Let's say that a history assignment asks for a paragraph on modes of transportation in colonial America.  The purpose of the question is to find out through writing whether a child has an understanding of transportation at that time in history, but writing out the answer on notebook paper is only one possibility. Why not create a comic book of drawings accompanied by text?  Why not write a short play about traveling in American colonial times and act it out?  What about writing the assignment using a quill pen? Perhaps your child could pretend to be a space traveler entering the data in a space log about the quaint ways of those American aliens in the 1600's. Or she could be a stable hand living in the 1600's and giving an eyewitness account of people traveling.

Let your child apply her personal interests and talents to the task of writing, whether she is artistic, musical, fond of acting, wild about animals, or a sports enthusiast. Naturally, this kind of writing is going to take longer, but then you have less wasted time trying to encourage her while she's trying to talk you out of the assignment. Discuss ways that she can approach school writing assignments. If she can't choose the topic, at least give her the option of choosing the method of communicating the information.

Best regards,

Sandra Garant

   
© 2024 Catholic Heritage Curricula