Supporting your Child’s Writing Skills

General guidelines

Kids learn best when they feel confident, successful, and supported. Here are ways you can help them: 

• Notice your child’s strengths – Kids have strengths in areas like art, physical skills, helping others, and being a good friend. Look for what your child does well and let them know you see them doing well. 
• Notice your child’s successes – Kids need to hear what they are doing well. Share with them areas they could improve. Start at the level where your child has success. Celebrate their successes. This may mean praising when they correctly write a letter or word or sentence. 
• Talk to your child’s teacher – Kids feel supported when they see their parents and teachers working together. 

Ways to build writing skills

• Read, read, and read some more! Reading stories helps your child’s spelling and writing skills. 

Handwriting

• Have your child practice making circles, lines, and different shapes. This helps develop their fine motor skills.
• Have your child trace over letters and mazes. This helps support fine motor control to make letters. 
• As your child gets better at tracing letters, have them start copying letters. As they copy letters, have your child say the letter’s name and the sound it makes. 
• Make it fun! Have your child form letters out of clay, shaving cream or with a wet sponge.

Writing

• If your child finds it hard to come up with ideas to write about, have them write on things they like. Praise their efforts rather than focus on errors in writing or spelling. 
• Give your child part of a sentence and then have them fill in the rest. Examples can be found at https://www.boredteachers.com/post/sentence-starters , https://brilliantio.com/sentence-starters-for-kids/ and https://www.k12reader.com/subject/composition/sentence-starters/ 
•  Graphic organizers show kids how to plan out their writing. Help your child to complete an organizer before doing a writing task. Organizers can be found at  https://www.understood.org/en/articles/download-graphic-organizers-to-help-grade-schoolers-with-writing 

Spelling

• Do word searches with your child. Find fun and free word searches at https://thewordsearch.com/ .
• If there are words your child often misspells, create a sheet with those words. Your child can look at the sheet to make sure they spell the words correctly.
• Cover, copy, and compare is a helpful strategy for improving spelling.  Have your child look at a spelling word. Cover the word and have your child write the word from memory. Compare how they did. https://www.interventioncentral.org/academic-interventions/writing/how-master-spelling-or-sight-words-cover-copy-compare
• If your child asks how to spell a word, it is ok to tell them.  You can help your child use technology or a dictionary to check spelling. 
• Have your child help with writing tasks like writing out the grocery list. 

Writing and spelling apps

Writing and spelling apps help your child practice writing and spelling skills they are learning in school. They may help to build your child's writing and spelling skills.

Preschool and early grade school

• ABC Mouse https://www.abcmouse.com/abc/?8a08850bc2=T1756462651.1706216724.2936
• Word Wagon by Duck Duck Moose https://www.commonsense.org/education/reviews/word-wagon-by-duck-duck-moose
• Word Wizard https://apps.apple.com/us/app/word-wizard-for-kids-school-ed/id447312716 or https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lescapadou.ttsalphabet&hl=en_US   
  

Grade school

• Mad Libs https://www.madlibs.com/apps/ 
•  For a listing of academic apps and ratings of them consider https://www.commonsensemedia.org/ 

Writing and spelling interventions

Interventions support children's writing and spelling skills. 

• Evidenced based Intervention Network https://ruralsmh.com/attention-and-academic-issues/ 
• Intervention Central https://www.interventioncentral.org/response-to-intervention 
• What Works Clearinghouse  https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/practiceguides