Many students, young or old, would say that writing can be a boring activity. If there are other major subjects to take care of, then writing will be the least of their worries. But it is important to realize that writing is not just about using the right tenses, organizing your thoughts constructively, and making a convincing argument. All these things you can learn, but learning how to love writing is the complicated part.
What can teachers do to motivate young writers to improve their writing skills? Is there any way to prevent them from hating writing? The good news is that there are lots of strategies one can use to help children learn how to love writing.
Craft different writing contests
Most students love to compete. Why not use this to your advantage by creating different writing contests to test their abilities? Make sure to keep these contests as a friendly competition. Don’t settle for a single category.
For instance, instead of making them write essays and academic reports, change it up a bit. Try different forms such as songs, poems, blog articles, and short stories. By doing this, you’re allowing your students to explore other forms of writing, not just the regular ones they do in school.
Allow them to publicize their works
There are publishing companies that provide teachers with writing practice worksheets for third-grade pupils for free. After letting your students work on the free worksheets, you can send their works back, and the publishing company will turn them into professionally bound books. The students and their parents can then choose to buy the published works, while the teachers can receive free classroom copies.
Let your children act on their creations
Instead of simply asking your students to write something and submit them, why not let them show off their creations? For instance, you can ask them to write lyrics to a song that they can perform in front of the class and other people. You can also ask them to write a play that they will act out. If they like to draw at the same time, you can ask them to write short stories with illustrations.
Encourage them to write a journal meant for their future selves
Now, this is a fun yet personal activity that you can do with all of your students. Instead of telling them to write a diary containing the things that have happened during the day, ask them to write a journal to their future selves. This will challenge your students to think about the things that have happened that day and tell their future selves what they need to learn from each experience.
For example, today, they accidentally hurt the feelings of one of their classmates. Instead of writing what happened and what they felt, allow them to write about what they have learned and what their future selves can do to avoid something like that from happening again. They will learn so many things from this activity. You can also help them be better versions of themselves after filling their journal.
Writing can be hard, especially for young learners. With the help of this list, your students will learn how to enjoy writing. In the future, you could be the very reason one of the most successful writers learned to love writing and explore the different writing styles.
