Writing is something that we all have to do. We start from a very young age in school and it grows with us all the way into our adult lives.
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As necessary as it is, not every child loves to read or write, but with the endless possibilities that can come from the passion of reading and writing, there are many ways to inspire yours kids to love it.
Imagination is something that ALL children have – you just need to help them find it.
Carey Ann Dodah, Head of Curriculum at Explore Learning (www.explorelearning.co.uk) gives us her top tips on how to inspire your child to love writing:
Start young
It is very important for children to start writing from a young age, and I don’t mean just writing stories but writing anything at all! It doesn’t matter if they don’t finish writing the stories, as long as they’re practicing their own stories as much as they possibly can and creating something unique.
Give them confidence
Confidence is a big issue amongst children – so much so that recent research found that the main reason why parents bring their children along to Explore Learning is not only to improve their English or maths – but to increase confidence*.
This shows that often children are afraid of giving writing a try; worried about what their peers will say or that they will get things wrong. Encourage them to have a go and not be afraid of making mistakes. Stagger their stories so that they at first write a 250 word story, then a 500 word, then a 1000 word story. Make sure that you celebrate them each time or encourage them to read it out in front of you or other members of the family so they really know what they’ve done is something to be proud of.
Make up stories about people they know
Some children may struggle to come up with characters’ names and personalities so to resolve this encourage them to write about their favourite characters from TV or film – or perhaps one of their friends or family.
Encourage their love of reading
Reading books to a child is a great way of sparking their imagination, even to an older child. Once the kids learned to read, you’re sometimes tempted to let them get on with it, but if you read a book with a child or put on a tape, you’re enjoying the book with them. You’re sending a message that books are important, reading is important, and therefore writing is important. Encouraging them to enjoy stories is the starting point to sparking their imagination.
Don’t get too bogged down in grammar.
Of course grammar is essential later in life, but I can’t emphasise enough that grammar can’t and shouldn’t prevent creativity. It shouldn’t stop a child’s imagination running free and putting down in writing something special. Time and time again I have come across a child who is self conscious about their poor grammar and spelling. Sadly it can create an insecurity that acts as a barrier to potentially great work. Quite simply, if a child starts their creative writing by thinking they have to be perfect, they won’t express themselves in the way they want to.
At Explore Learning, grammar isn’t the first thing we focus on: in class it’s all about ideas. Dare I say it, it doesn’t matter if you can’t spell some things; what’s important is that you’ve got some brilliant ideas that aren’t ‘dumbed down’ by an inability to express yourself perfectly grammatically.
Write about Real Life
What they write doesn’t need to be fictional; if it helps them to put pen to paper, ask them to write about something exciting that happened lately. Encourage them to use vivid, emotive language. Once they’ve done this they can move onto making up their own stories where they can let their imagination take control!
Enter Competitions
Competitions are a fantastic way to give children confidence in their writing. Each year we run the National Young Writers’ Award which thousands of children all over the UK enter. Our judge this year is Cressida Cowell, author of the world famous How to Train Your Dragon series. She actually won a similar competition when she was just nine years old and says that it is this that inspired her to go on to become the best-selling author she is today. She says, “Writing in itself is quite intimidating so competitions like the National Young Writers’ Award give children confidence in themselves. When I won the writing competition it made me think, ‘I could do this one day’ and appreciate that I was actually quite good at it. It is so important to encourage children to write stories and think creatively – especially when the time for children to write their own stories and explore their creativity in an uninhibited way is being squeezed under the national curriculum. There are many jobs where writing is very important so if we can inspire children to love writing early on – and have confidence in themselves – they will be inspired to keep going and write their stories down. Children need to realise that all writers began somewhere and this could be the perfect opportunity to start!”
Avoid the TV
Getting children to love writing can prove to be a challenge, especially with television, films and games being it’s most harsh competitors. Replace TV or games with reading time and try to integrate this into your daily life. If your child sees you replacing TV with books then they are more likely to be inspired to get excited about it too.
At Explore Learning we run Literacy and Creative Writing courses for children aged 5 to 14. The creative writing courses for children aged 9 to 11 have proved very popular with parents and children alike – with over 1,100 students attending the courses – with that steadily increasing year on year.
To find your nearest centre visit www.explorelearning.co.uk
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