Motivating Reluctant Writers

It can be really difficult to get kids started, especially those in the very early years of school. They seem to have the perception that if they make a mark on the page it has to be perfect and that they can't change their mind.

Guided writing is the perfect place to start. This involves sitting down and planning the piece together. If done properly it can take up to 20minutes just to write a sentence but it's worth it. Guided writing involves having a discussion to brainstorm a topic, put simply "What are we going to write about". Once a topic has been decided then it needs to be formalised, "What sentence will we write about that?" This is all done before a pencil gets anywhere near a piece of paper!! Then a discussion will occur around the actual process of writing taking in the fact that we start at the top of the page, working form left to right. Depending on the age of your child they may also know that we have to start the sentence with a capital letter. As the adult scribes the sentence it is important that the child is responsible for ensuring that the words maintain the sequence and that the adult is not making silly mistakes like writing in the wrong spot or not leaving spaces between words. Once the sentence has been written then you need to read it through again to check it. After this it is the child's turn to copy it. This leads to success as the sentence is theirs, they constructed it orally first, they have had the process of writing modeled and they don't need to remember what they were going to write as it is in front of them.