how to teach a child to write an essay

How to Teach Your Child to Write an Essay – Step by Step

Children are naturally creative, and essay writing should come easy to them. But it usually doesn’t. 

So, how can you teach your child essay writing while making the process enjoyable for both of you?

I’m Tutor Phil, and in this article I’ll show you how to teach your child how to express thoughts on paper, even if some resistance is present.

We’ll first learn three principles that will help you make progress fast. And then we’ll go through the step-by-step process of teaching your child how to write an essay. 

Principle 1. Clarity equals motivation

We’ve all heard the expression: “You can lead the horse to the water, but you can’t make it drink.” One of your concerns can be your child’s motivation. 

You may be convinced that your child hates writing or is really bored with it. Perhaps your child will do anything to avoid sitting down to write. 

And you know what – any or all of the above may be true. But your child can still learn how to write an essay because it is not the lack of motivation per se that is the problem.

In this short video, Dr. Lee Hausner gives some eye-opening advice about motivating a child:

Here are the key points Dr. Hausner makes:

• You cannot create motivation in somebody else.
• Strong parents often mistakenly feel that they can transfer their motivation onto their children.
• Motivation is internal.
• Simplistic formula: “ Activity + Satisfaction = Motivation .”
• Conversely, “ Activity + Stress & Pressure = Avoidance .”
• Create an environment where your child can be successful and enjoy what he does. 
• Encourage and reward any small success and bit of progress. 

Let’s apply these principles to motivating a child in writing an essay. 

How to motivate a child to write

Chances are that if your child would rather not engage in writing, that is primarily because the process is fuzzy in his mind (and I’ll use the pronoun “he” to refer to your child throughout the tutorial, for the sake of elegance and brevity). 

You see, essay writing is not really taught in school. It is taught kind of sort of, but not really. 

Assigning a topic, grading the essays, and making suggestions for improvement is not teaching. It’s only a part of the process. 

To teach is to give the student a method, a step-by-step process, in which every step can be measured and improved. 

That’s what I’m about to give you. And that’s what you will need to effectively teach your child. 

But when a child does not have a step-by-step method, the process is fuzzy in his mind. And whatever is fuzzy is viewed as complicated and difficult because it’s like eating an elephant whole. 

Let’s revisit Dr. Hausner’s formula: “ Activity + Satisfaction = Motivation .”

Activity can be satisfying only if it is successful to some degree. When your child succeeds at something, and you acknowledge him for it, that becomes fun, enjoyable, and satisfying.

But you see, it’s hard to succeed at something without knowing what you’re doing. And even if you succeed, if you did not follow a recipe, then in the back of your mind you suspect that you probably can’t repeat or replicate the success.

Not knowing what to do while being expected to do it is a recipe for avoidance. And guess what – your child probably got his share of fuzzy instructions.

For example, consider this instruction:

“Tie it all together.”  

This statement is meaningless – to a child or even to an adult. What does it really mean to “tie it all together?” And yet, this is how they usually teach how to write a conclusion paragraph, as an example. 

But such a statement only creates fuzziness and demotivates.

So, in this tutorial, we’ll be cultivating clarity. I’ll be giving you crystal clear instructions so you could develop clarity in yourself and help your child develop it, too.

Principle 2. Writing is thinking on paper

An essay consists of sentences. The word “ sentence ” comes from the Latin word “sententia,” which means “thought.” 

Thus, to write literally means to express thoughts on paper. Why is this important?

This is important because by teaching your child how to write an essay, you’re really teaching him how to think . 

Your child will carry this skill through his entire life. It will be useful, even indispensable in:

• Acing standardized tests
• Writing papers in college
• Putting together reports and presentation professionally
• Defending a point of view effectively

You can tell I take essay writing seriously 🙂

But if you ever run out of patience yourself, just remember that you’re really teaching your child how to think. 

Principle 3. Essays are built not written

When you child hears the word “ write ,” he gets that queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. 

We’ll make it a lot easier for him by thinking of writing an essay and referring to it as just “ building an essay.”

If your child has ever loved playing with Lego, then the method you’re about to learn will feel familiar, both in terms of motivation and developing the skill. 

By the way, if you want to brush up your own essay writing skills before you sit down with your child to teach him, I highly recommend this article: Essay Writing for Beginners . 

All right – without further ado, here are…

Six steps to teaching your child essay writing: 

Step 1. Pick a topic and say something about it

In order to write, your child must write about something . That something is the subject of the essay. In this step, you want to help your child pick a topic and say something about it. 

In essence, you’re asking your child these two questions:

What will your essay be about?

• What about it?

For example, 

“My essay will be about grandma’s lasagna.”

“Okay. What about grandma’s lasagna?”

“It’s my favorite food.”

The result will be a complete main point, also known as the thesis. A thesis is the main point of the entire essay summarized in one sentence: 

“My grandma’s lasagna is my favorite food.”

Boom! Now, the reader knows exactly what this essay will be about. It is also clear that this is going to be a glowing review. 

Here’s my short video explaining what a thesis is:

When teaching a child, it’s important to keep the topic unilateral. In other words, it should be either positive or negative. It should be one simple idea. 

Don’t start out trying to develop a more complex topic that offers a balanced perspective with positives and negatives. Don’t do a compare/contrast, either. Keep it simple for now. 

This is the first step because the main point is the genesis for all other ideas in the essay . 

How to help your child pick a topic

Encourage your child to pick a topic he can get excited about because then he’ll be enthusiastic thinking and talking about it. 

Try to think of some of the things you know he is interested in. He can write an essay about absolutely anything.

It doesn’t have to be a serious or an academic subject. It could be anything from apple pie to Spiderman. 

Of course, the subject should be informed by your child’s age, as well. But once you sit down to work on essay writing, make it clear to your child that he can pick any topic he wants. 

Ask your child what he would like to write about or “build into an essay.” And whatever he chooses, just run with it. That’s what your first essay together will be about. 

Once you’re settled on the topic, just have your child write it down on a piece of paper or type it into the computer.

Here is a list of suggestions for essay topics to give a try:

• What I love the most about the summer
• My favorite thing to do on weekends
• John is my best friend because…
• Essay writing is…
• My least favorite day of the week is…
• My favorite season is…
• It is important to be brave (intelligent, skillful at something, etc.)
• If I could have any animal for a pet, it would be…
• My sister (brother) makes my life (exciting, difficult, etc.)
• Holidays are fun times (or dreadful times).

Remember – this is not the only or the last essay you’ll write together. Just encourage your child to pick a topic and write it down. Now, you’re ready for the next step. 

Step 2. Practice the Power of Three

We’re building our essays, remember? Not writing them. At least at this point, all you’ve done is encouraged your child to pick a topic. No writing involved yet.

In this step, no real writing is involved, either. It’s just a mental exercise, really. 

In writing or building an essay, it is necessary to break things into parts. Young children love to break things because they want to see how something works or what it looks like inside. 

How do you write an essay about an egg?

You must first divide the concept of an egg into parts. How do you do that? I highly recommend this simple technique I call the Power of Three. 

Three is an optimal number for a young brain, and really for adults, as well, to think about and process. Our brain thinks like this: “One, two, three, many.”

One doesn’t help us because you’re not dividing. Two is okay but not quite enough ideas to develop.

Three is easy to deal with while giving your child a challenge. And let’s set the record straight – thinking is not easy. It is challenging. This is why so few people teach it. 

But we’re making it fun by breaking it into steps and providing clear instructions. 

Okay, so back to the egg. Let’s apply the power of three to the idea of an egg:

You see, if we only have a whole egg as an idea, it’s like staring at the blank screen or sheet of paper. Nothing causes the writer’s block better than one solid piece.

But now that we’ve divided this idea into three sub-ideas, or supporting ideas, this makes our life discussing eggs a lot easier. 

Now, if we wanted to write an essay about eggs, we can discuss:

• The yolk and its color, taste, and nutritional content
• The egg white, its color, taste, and nutritional content
• The shell, its color, texture, and shape

Note that when we divide a topic or an idea, each part must be different from the other parts in some important ways. In other words, we want three distinct parts. 

You can use this part of the tutorial and ask your child to think about how to divide an egg into parts. It’s a very intuitive step, and your child will love the challenge. 

And by the way, you child may get very creative about it because the answer is not necessarily the yolks, the white, and the shell. It could be:

• Chicken eggs
• Ostrich eggs
• Boiled eggs

Whatever way to divide eggs into three concepts your child comes up with, approve and praise it. Now, let’s apply the power of three to an actual topic. 

We need a topic that we’ll use for the rest of the tutorial. Here it is:

“If I could have any animal for a pet, it would be a panther.”

Applying the Power of Three to an essay topic

Let’s apply what we just learned to this topic about a panther. Note that we have the entire thesis, a complete main point. Our subject is “a panther as a pet.”

We’re just using this example with an understanding that panthers don’t make good pets and belong in the wild. But since we asked, we should roll with the child’s imagination. 

Now, you want to encourage your child to come up with three reasons why he would choose a panther as a pet.

This is a challenging step. The first one or two reasons will come relatively easily. The third reason usually makes the child, anyone really, scratch his head a little.

Let’s come up with three reasons why a panther might make a great pet. 

Reason 1. Panthers are magnificently beautiful.

Great! That’s a good reason. 

Reason 2. A panther is more powerful than virtually any other pet.

That’s another legitimate reason to want a panther for a pet – you’re the king of the neighborhood, if not the whole town. 

And now, we’re thinking of reason 3, which will be the most challenging, so be ready for that. 

Reason 3. Panthers are loyal.

I’m making this one up because I really have no idea if panthers are loyal to their human owners when they have any. But I need a reason, this is just a practice essay, and anything goes. 

When your child comes up with a reason that is not necessarily true or plausible, let him run with it. What really matters is how well he can support his points by using his logic and imagination. 

Working with facts is next level. Right now, you want your child to get comfortable dividing topics into subtopics. 

The only criterion that matters is whether this subtopic actually helps support the main idea. If it does, it works. 

Step 3. Build a clear thesis statement 

Once you know the topic and the supporting points, you have everything you need to write out the thesis statement. Note that there is a difference between a thesis and a thesis statement.

Here’s a short video with a simple definition and example of a thesis statement:

Once you and your child have completed steps 1 & 2 thoroughly, step 3 is really easy. All you need to do is write out the thesis statement, using the information you already have. 

In fact, at this point, you should have every sentence of your statement and just need to put them all together into one paragraph. Let’s write out our complete thesis statement:

“If I could have any animal for a pet, it would be a panther, for three reasons. Panthers are magnificently beautiful. They are more powerful than virtually any other kind of a pet. And they are loyal.”

Note that we added the phrase “ for three reasons ” to indicate that we are introducing the actual reasons. In other words, we are building an introductory paragraph. We’re just presenting our main and supporting points here. 

When you read this opening paragraph, you unmistakably come away with a clear idea of what this essay is about. It makes a simple statement and declares three reasons why it is true. And that’s it. 

It is so clear that not even the least careful reader in the world can possibly miss the point. This is the kind of writing you want to cultivate in your child. Because, remember, writing reflects thinking. It would be impossible to write this paragraph without thinking clearly. 

Note also that there is no need for embellishments or other kinds of fluff. Elegant writing is like sculpture – you take away until there is no more left to take away. 

And guess what – we now have a great first paragraph going! Without much writing, we have just written the first paragraph. We were mostly building and dividing and thinking and imagining. And the result is a whole opening paragraph. 

Step 4. Build the body of the essay 

The body of the essay is where the main point is supported with evidence. Let’s revisit one of the rules of writing – to write an essay, you need to divide things into parts.

The body of the essay is always divided into sections. Now, since your child is presumably a beginner, we simply call the sections paragraphs. 

But keep in mind that a section can have more than one paragraph. An essay does not necessarily have the standard 5-paragraph structure. It can be as long as your child wants. 

But in this tutorial, each of our sections has just one paragraph, and that’s perfectly sufficient. 

How many sections will our body of the essay have? Well, we used the power of three, we came up with three supporting points, and so the body of the essay should naturally contain three paragraphs. 

How long should the paragraphs be? Let me show you how to gauge word count.

This is just an example of how you can teach your child to distribute the number of words across paragraphs. 

As you can see, our body paragraphs should probably be longer than the introductory paragraph and the conclusion. 

This is how I always teach my students to go about a writing assignment that has a certain word count requirement. The essay above will contain about 400 words.

If your child needs to write 600 words, then the following might be a good distribution:

• Introductory paragraph – 75 words
• Body paragraph 1 – 150 words
• Body paragraph 2 – 150 words
• Body paragraph 3 – 150 words
• Conclusion – 75 words

By doing this kind of essay arithmetic, it is easy to map out how much to write in each paragraph and not go overboard in any part of the essay. 

Body paragraph structure 

A paragraph in the body of an essay has a distinct structure. And this structure is not restrictive but it is rather liberating because your child will know exactly how to build it out.

The first sentence in the body paragraph is always the lead sentence. It must summarize the contents of the paragraph. 

The good news is that this sentence is usually a form of one of the sentences that we’ve already written. How so?

Well, in our thesis statement, we have three supporting points. Each of them is essentially a lead sentence for that section or paragraph of the essay. For example, consider this sentence from our thesis statement:

“Panthers are magnificently beautiful.”

This is the first reason that your child would like a panther as a pet. It is also a very clear standalone sentence. 

It is also an almost perfect lead sentence. I say “ almost ” because we don’t want to repeat sentences in an essay. 

So, we’ll take this sentence as a base and add one or two words to it. We can also change a word or two by using synonyms. That way, we’ll expand it just slightly and turn it into a perfect lead sentence for our first body paragraph:

“ Panthers are very beautiful and graceful animals.”

Okay, so we added the epithet “graceful,” but that’s okay because grace is virtually synonymous with beauty. And now we have a great lead sentence and are ready to proceed. 

Let’s write out the entire first body paragraph and see how it works:

“ Panthers are very graceful and beautiful animals. When portrayed in documentaries about animals, panthers are nicely balanced. They are not as huge as tigers or lions. And their size allows them to be nimble and flexible. Their size and agility make them move very beautifully, almost artistically. When I imagine walking with a pet like that on the street, I can see people staring at my panther and admiring its beauty. It would definitely be the most beautiful pet in my entire neighborhood.”

The first sentence, as we already know, is the lead sentence. The next three sentences explain how panthers’ balanced size and agility make them graceful. 

The following sentence is an explanation of how these qualities make them beautiful through the power of movement. 

And finally comes the most specific bit of evidence – an example. This child paints a perfect picture of himself walking his pet panther on a leash. People admire the animal’s beauty, and the kid gets a tremendous kick out of this experience. 

It is an example because it contains imagery, perhaps even sounds. It is a specific event happening in a particular place and time. 

As you can see, this paragraph proceeds from general to specific. It also follows the structure in the diagram perfectly. 

Guide your child through writing two more of these paragraphs, following the same organization. And you’re done with the body. 

Proceeding from general to specific

Argumentative (expository) essays always proceed from general to specific. Our most general statement is the thesis, and it’s the first statement in the essay. 

Then we have our supporting points, and each of them is more specific than the thesis but more general than anything else in the essay. 

Each lead sentence is slightly more specific than the preceding supporting points in the thesis statement. 

Then, an explanation is even more specific. And finally, examples are the most specific elements in an essay. 

When working with your child, cultivate this ability to see the difference between the general and the specific. And help your child proceed in that manner in the essay. 

This ability is a mark of a developed and mature writer and thinker. 

Step 5. Add the conclusion

I almost always recommend concluding an essay with a simple restatement. Meaning, your child should learn how to say the same things in different words in the conclusion. 

Why did I say, “almost?” Because some teachers will require that your child write a conclusion without repetition. 

In that case, the teacher should instruct the student what she expects to read in the conclusion. A great way to deal with this situation is to approach the teacher and ask what kind of a conclusion she expects. 

And she’ll say what she wants, and your child will simply abide. 

But in the vast majority of cases, simple restatement works just fine. All it really entails is writing out an equivalent of the thesis statement – only using different words and phrases. 

Here is our thesis statement:

And here’s our conclusion:

“I would love to have a panther as a pet. Panthers are such magnificent animals that everyone would admire my pet. People would also respect it and keep some distance because of its power. And the loyalty of panthers would definitely seal the deal.”

All we did was restate the points previously made. Let your child master writing this kind of a conclusion. And if you’d like a detailed tutorial on how to write conclusions, I wrote one you can access here . 

Step 6. Add an introductory sentence

The final step is to add one sentence in the first paragraph. I didn’t use to teach it because it’s perfectly fine to get straight to the point in an essay.

This little introduction is an equivalent of clearing your throat 🙂

However, teachers in school and professors in college expect some kind of an introduction. So, all your child has to do is add one introductory sentence right before the thesis. 

This sentence should be even more general than the thesis. It should kind of pull the reader from his world into the world of the essay. 

Let’s write such a sentence as our introduction:

“Not all pets are created equal, and people have their choices.”

And here’s our complete introductory paragraph:

And this concludes the tutorial. You can keep coming back to it as often as you want to follow the steps, using different topics. 

If you’d like the help of a professional, don’t hesitate and hit me up . 

Tutor Phil is an e-learning professional who helps adult learners finish their degrees by teaching them academic writing skills.

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How to Teach Kids to Write in 9 Easy Steps

Step 1: Develop Fine Motor Skills

Step 2: introduce prewriting skills, step 3: teach letter recognition, step 4: practice writing letters, step 5: connect letters to sounds, step 6: encourage writing words, step 7: introduce writing instruments, step 8: expand writing contexts, step 9: encourage reading.

Ever felt a mix of joy and worry watching a kid clutch a crayon for the first time? If you’re nodding, you’re not alone. Figuring out how to teach kids to write is a common puzzle for many of us. It’s that first big step from messy lines to meaningful words.

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Surprisingly, teaching kids to write doesn’t have to be a head-scratcher. With some simple steps and fun activities, it can become an exciting journey for you and your little one.

In the following sections, we’ll dive into a detailed step-by-step guide on how to teach kids to write. Each step is crafted to build upon the last, ensuring a solid foundation is laid for your child’s writing skills. By the end of these strategies, your kids will be equipped with the tools to express their thoughts and ideas clearly and creatively.

9 Easy Steps to Teach Kids to Write

Fine motor skills are the foundation of learning to write. They involve using small muscles in the hands and fingers to perform tasks like holding a pencil, turning pages, and eventually writing letters and words. Developing these skills is crucial for teaching kids to write because it directly impacts their ability to control writing instruments and make the precise movements required.

When to Start:

The journey to develop writing skills begins long before a child ever picks up a pencil to write. It starts as early as toddlerhood. Children can begin engaging in activities to enhance their fine motor skills from as young as 18 months old. Starting early is important to ensure they have a strong foundation to build upon as they grow.

How to Do It:

• Engage your child in activities that encourage using their hands and fingers. Play with clay, finger painting, and threading beads are excellent ways to strengthen these muscles. Using safety scissors for cutting simple shapes out of paper is another beneficial activity.
• Incorporate fine motor skills development into daily tasks. Encourage your child to help with buttoning clothes, zipping up bags, or using child-safe utensils during meal times.
• Provide toys and tools that promote fine motor development. Puzzles , building blocks, and age-appropriate art supplies or online fine motor skills games are great choices.

Here are some fun fine motor skills games to get started:

Key Milestones:

• Initially, focus on your child’s ability to grasp and hold objects. This is the first step towards holding a pencil correctly.
• Children should be able to manipulate objects more precisely as their skills advance, such as turning pages or unscrewing lids.

Prewriting skills are the early writing skills children need before they can form letters and words. These skills include drawing lines, shapes and eventually combining these to make letters. Introducing prewriting skills is critical in teaching kids how to write because it helps children understand the basic strokes involved in letter formation.

Children are ready to start developing prewriting skills around the age of 3. This is when they typically have enough control over their hand and finger movements to begin drawing basic shapes and lines.

• Begin with simple shapes like circles, straight lines, and curves. These shapes are the building blocks of letters.
• Use tracing worksheets or apps that allow children to trace lines and shapes. This helps them understand the motion of writing and builds their confidence.

Here are some fun shapes worksheets to get started:

• Being able to draw circles, lines, and crosses is a sign they’re developing the necessary control for writing.
• Successfully tracing over dotted lines or shapes shows they’re ready to start forming more complex figures, like letters.

Letter recognition is the ability to recognize and name all the letters of the alphabet. It’s a fundamental aspect of learning how to teach kids to write because recognizing letters is the first step towards understanding that letters represent sounds, which combine to form words.

Letter recognition can begin as early as age 2 or 3, alongside or shortly after introducing prewriting skills. At this stage, children are usually curious about letters and eager to learn more about them.

• Using alphabet books is a great way to familiarize children with letters. Read together and point out each letter, discussing its shape and sound.
• Engage children with games that involve finding and naming letters. This could be as simple as a letter hunt around the house or structured games like alphabet puzzles.

Begin with these letter games:

• Naming each letter, both uppercase and lowercase, is a key milestone in letter recognition.
• Recognizing letters not just in books or games but also in the world around them, like on signs or in their favorite storybooks .

Practicing writing letters is a crucial step in teaching a preschooler to write. It’s where the physical act of writing starts to take shape, moving from recognizing and drawing shapes to forming actual letters. This stage is essential for children to learn how to express themselves through writing.

Once children are comfortable with prewriting shapes and have a good grasp of letter recognition, usually around ages 3 to 4, they’re ready to start practicing writing letters.

• Motivating children by teaching them to write their names first is a powerful tool. It makes the learning process personal and engaging, giving them a sense of pride in their writing.
• Providing worksheets for tracing and writing letters helps children understand the form and structure of each letter. Start with uppercase letters, which are generally easier to write, and then move to lowercase letters.

Begin with these letter tracing games :

• Being able to write their own name is a significant milestone for preschoolers.
• Moving from tracing to independently writing letters shows progress in their writing skills.

By introducing letter sounds, children begin to understand that letters are not just shapes but symbols that represent sounds. This understanding is crucial for developing reading skills and is a fun way to teach writing as it makes the process more interactive and meaningful.

This step can begin concurrently with practicing writing letters, typically around ages 4 to 5, as children’s understanding of the alphabet solidifies.

• Introducing letter sounds with phonics games and flashcards makes learning dynamic and engaging. Phonics activities help children make the connection between letters and sounds, a critical step in learning to read and write.

Start with these letter sound games:

• Start forming simple words to emphasize the connection between writing and reading. This can be as straightforward as writing C-A-T and sounding it out together. It reinforces the idea that combining letters creates words with meaning.
• Being able to associate specific sounds with their corresponding letters.
• The ability to write and sound out simple words marks a significant advancement in their writing and reading journey.

Encouraging writing words is a pivotal step in how to teach kids to write. It transitions them from understanding individual letters and sounds to recognizing and forming whole words. This stage boosts their confidence and demonstrates the practical use of writing in communication.

After children are comfortable with letters and simple phonics, usually around the age of 5 or when they show interest in creating words, it’s time to introduce this step.

• Teaching common sight words for recognition and writing is essential. Sight words are frequently used words children are encouraged to recognize on sight. Start with a small, manageable list and gradually expand as they become more confident.

Begin here:

• Encouraging the formation of simple sentences helps children see how words come together to express ideas. Begin with sentences that are relevant to them, like “I like my cat” or “The sun is hot.”
• Being able to write and recognize common sight words .
• The ability to string words together to form basic sentences.

Introducing a variety of writing instruments is crucial for children to explore and find what they are most comfortable using. It’s also an opportunity to teach the proper grip, which is essential for writing efficiently and avoiding hand fatigue. This step is about refining their physical skills for writing and offering writing tips for kids to enhance their writing experience.

This can be introduced as soon as children start showing interest in drawing or writing, and should be continuously adapted as they grow and their skills develop.

• Allow children to experiment with different writing tools such as pencils, crayons, markers, and chalk. Each tool offers a different grip, resistance, and experience on paper, helping them develop a versatile skill set.
• Teaching the correct way to hold a pencil is fundamental. Show them the “tripod grip,” which is holding the pencil with the thumb, index, and middle finger. This grip controls the pencil, making writing easier and more comfortable.
• Experimenting with Different Tools: Children should feel comfortable trying out various writing instruments and expressing a preference.
• Mastering the Tripod Grip: Successfully using the tripod grip when writing or drawing is a sign of developing fine motor control and readiness for more advanced writing tasks.

Expanding writing contexts is about broadening a child’s understanding and application of writing across different genres. This step is crucial to improve writing skills as it exposes children to a variety of writing forms, structures, and purposes. It encourages them to think creatively and apply their writing skills in diverse ways.

This can be introduced once children are comfortable writing sentences and simple paragraphs, typically around ages 6 to 8.

• Introduce various writing forms such as stories , letters, poems , and reports. Discuss the structure and purpose of each genre. This variety keeps writing exciting and shows its practical uses in real life.
• Use prompts to inspire creativity and interest in different topics. Prompts can be questions, pictures, or scenarios that spark ideas for writing. This is one of the effective ways to improve writing skills for students by making them think and write creatively.
• Successfully writing a simple story, letter, or poem.
• Being able to create a coherent piece of writing in response to a given prompt.

A strong reading habit is foundational to writing well. Reading regularly exposes children to a wide range of vocabulary , sentence structures , and styles, enhancing their language skills and understanding. This, in turn, significantly improves writing skills as children learn to emulate the structures and styles they encounter in their reading.

Encouraging a love for reading should start as early as possible, even before a child begins to write, and continue throughout their education.

• Foster a love for reading by sharing books together, visiting libraries, and discussing stories. Encourage children to explore books on topics that interest them, which will keep them engaged and motivated to read more.
• Talk about the books they are reading. Discussing characters, plots, and what they enjoyed helps deepen their understanding and appreciation of writing.
• Establishing a routine where reading is a daily activity.
• Being able to talk about what they read, including story elements and what they liked or didn’t like.

How SplashLearn Can Encourage Children to Write

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SplashLearn is a fun and interactive platform designed to make learning an exciting adventure for children. When it comes to writing, SplashLearn offers a variety of resources and activities that can significantly encourage and improve children’s writing skills. Here’s how SplashLearn can be a valuable tool in your child’s writing journey:

• Interactive Writing Games: SplashLearn includes a range of writing games that are not only engaging but also educational. These games are designed to teach children the basics of writing, from letter recognition to word formation, in a fun and interactive way. 
• Personalized Learning Paths: One of the key features of SplashLearn is its ability to adapt to each child’s learning pace and style. This personalized approach ensures that children are not overwhelmed or bored but are constantly challenged in a way that’s just right for them. This tailored learning experience can help children progress in their writing skills more effectively.
• Rewards and Motivation: SplashLearn uses a system of rewards and achievements to motivate children. As they complete writing tasks and games, they earn points or badges, which can motivate young learners. This positive reinforcement encourages children to keep practicing their writing, helping them improve over time.
• Parental Involvement: SplashLearn also provides tools and reports for parents to track their child’s progress. This feature allows parents to see how their child is advancing in their writing skills and identify areas where they might need extra help. It also offers suggestions for activities outside the app that encourage writing practice.
• Educational Resources: Beyond games , SplashLearn offers a wealth of worksheets to support writing learning at home. These resources can be used alongside interactive games to provide children with a comprehensive writing learning experience.

5 Benefits of Teaching Kids How to Write Effectively

• Writing is a fundamental form of communication. Teaching kids how to write effectively helps them express their thoughts, ideas, and emotions clearly and confidently in academic settings and their personal lives.
• Good writing skills are crucial for success in school. From completing homework assignments to writing essays and taking notes, the ability to write well can significantly impact a child’s academic achievement and future educational opportunities.
• Writing offers children a unique outlet to explore their creativity and imagination. By learning to write stories, poems, or even journal entries, kids can develop their creative talents and discover new ways of seeing the world.
• The process of writing involves complex thinking skills such as planning, organizing, and problem-solving. Teaching kids to write effectively helps enhance these cognitive abilities, contributing to overall intellectual growth.

Conclusion 

Learning how to teach kids to write is a journey filled with opportunities to enhance their communication, creativity, and cognitive development. By embracing this journey, we can help our children build a strong foundation in writing, setting them up for success in school and beyond.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is the best age to teach a child to write.

The best age to start teaching a child to write is around 3 to 4 years old, beginning with basic prewriting skills and gradually moving to more structured writing tasks.

How should a 4 year old be writing?

A 4-year-old should be practicing prewriting skills such as drawing lines, shapes, and beginning to recognize and attempt writing letters, especially those in their name.

Should a 3 year old be able to write their name?

While some 3-year-olds may start showing interest in writing their names, it’s more common for them to recognize and trace letters rather than write their names independently.

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Essay Writing: A complete guide for students and teachers

P LANNING, PARAGRAPHING AND POLISHING: FINE-TUNING THE PERFECT ESSAY

Essay writing is an essential skill for every student. Whether writing a particular academic essay (such as persuasive, narrative, descriptive, or expository) or a timed exam essay, the key to getting good at writing is to write. Creating opportunities for our students to engage in extended writing activities will go a long way to helping them improve their skills as scribes.

But, putting the hours in alone will not be enough to attain the highest levels in essay writing. Practice must be meaningful. Once students have a broad overview of how to structure the various types of essays, they are ready to narrow in on the minor details that will enable them to fine-tune their work as a lean vehicle of their thoughts and ideas.

In this article, we will drill down to some aspects that will assist students in taking their essay writing skills up a notch. Many ideas and activities can be integrated into broader lesson plans based on essay writing. Often, though, they will work effectively in isolation – just as athletes isolate physical movements to drill that are relevant to their sport. When these movements become second nature, they can be repeated naturally in the context of the game or in our case, the writing of the essay.

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Planning an essay

The Boys Scouts’ motto is famously ‘Be Prepared’. It’s a solid motto that can be applied to most aspects of life; essay writing is no different. Given the purpose of an essay is generally to present a logical and reasoned argument, investing time in organising arguments, ideas, and structure would seem to be time well spent.

Given that essays can take a wide range of forms and that we all have our own individual approaches to writing, it stands to reason that there will be no single best approach to the planning stage of essay writing. That said, there are several helpful hints and techniques we can share with our students to help them wrestle their ideas into a writable form. Let’s take a look at a few of the best of these:

BREAK THE QUESTION DOWN: UNDERSTAND YOUR ESSAY TOPIC.

Whether students are tackling an assignment that you have set for them in class or responding to an essay prompt in an exam situation, they should get into the habit of analyzing the nature of the task. To do this, they should unravel the question’s meaning or prompt. Students can practice this in class by responding to various essay titles, questions, and prompts, thereby gaining valuable experience breaking these down.

Have students work in groups to underline and dissect the keywords and phrases and discuss what exactly is being asked of them in the task. Are they being asked to discuss, describe, persuade, or explain? Understanding the exact nature of the task is crucial before going any further in the planning process, never mind the writing process .

BRAINSTORM AND MIND MAP WHAT YOU KNOW:

Once students have understood what the essay task asks them, they should consider what they know about the topic and, often, how they feel about it. When teaching essay writing, we so often emphasize that it is about expressing our opinions on things, but for our younger students what they think about something isn’t always obvious, even to themselves.

Brainstorming and mind-mapping what they know about a topic offers them an opportunity to uncover not just what they already know about a topic, but also gives them a chance to reveal to themselves what they think about the topic. This will help guide them in structuring their research and, later, the essay they will write . When writing an essay in an exam context, this may be the only ‘research’ the student can undertake before the writing, so practicing this will be even more important.

RESEARCH YOUR ESSAY

The previous step above should reveal to students the general direction their research will take. With the ubiquitousness of the internet, gone are the days of students relying on a single well-thumbed encyclopaedia from the school library as their sole authoritative source in their essay. If anything, the real problem for our students today is narrowing down their sources to a manageable number. Students should use the information from the previous step to help here. At this stage, it is important that they:

●      Ensure the research material is directly relevant to the essay task

●      Record in detail the sources of the information that they will use in their essay

●      Engage with the material personally by asking questions and challenging their own biases

●      Identify the key points that will be made in their essay

●      Group ideas, counterarguments, and opinions together

●      Identify the overarching argument they will make in their own essay.

Once these stages have been completed the student is ready to organise their points into a logical order.

WRITING YOUR ESSAY

There are a number of ways for students to organize their points in preparation for writing. They can use graphic organizers , post-it notes, or any number of available writing apps. The important thing for them to consider here is that their points should follow a logical progression. This progression of their argument will be expressed in the form of body paragraphs that will inform the structure of their finished essay.

The number of paragraphs contained in an essay will depend on a number of factors such as word limits, time limits, the complexity of the question etc. Regardless of the essay’s length, students should ensure their essay follows the Rule of Three in that every essay they write contains an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion.

Generally speaking, essay paragraphs will focus on one main idea that is usually expressed in a topic sentence that is followed by a series of supporting sentences that bolster that main idea. The first and final sentences are of the most significance here with the first sentence of a paragraph making the point to the reader and the final sentence of the paragraph making the overall relevance to the essay’s argument crystal clear. 

Though students will most likely be familiar with the broad generic structure of essays, it is worth investing time to ensure they have a clear conception of how each part of the essay works, that is, of the exact nature of the task it performs. Let’s review:

Common Essay Structure

Introduction: Provides the reader with context for the essay. It states the broad argument that the essay will make and informs the reader of the writer’s general perspective and approach to the question.

Body Paragraphs: These are the ‘meat’ of the essay and lay out the argument stated in the introduction point by point with supporting evidence.

Conclusion: Usually, the conclusion will restate the central argument while summarising the essay’s main supporting reasons before linking everything back to the original question.

ESSAY WRITING PARAGRAPH WRITING TIPS

●      Each paragraph should focus on a single main idea

●      Paragraphs should follow a logical sequence; students should group similar ideas together to avoid incoherence

●      Paragraphs should be denoted consistently; students should choose either to indent or skip a line

●      Transition words and phrases such as alternatively , consequently , in contrast should be used to give flow and provide a bridge between paragraphs.

HOW TO EDIT AN ESSAY

Students shouldn’t expect their essays to emerge from the writing process perfectly formed. Except in exam situations and the like, thorough editing is an essential aspect in the writing process. 

Often, students struggle with this aspect of the process the most. After spending hours of effort on planning, research, and writing the first draft, students can be reluctant to go back over the same terrain they have so recently travelled. It is important at this point to give them some helpful guidelines to help them to know what to look out for. The following tips will provide just such help: 

One Piece at a Time: There is a lot to look out for in the editing process and often students overlook aspects as they try to juggle too many balls during the process. One effective strategy to combat this is for students to perform a number of rounds of editing with each focusing on a different aspect. For example, the first round could focus on content, the second round on looking out for word repetition (use a thesaurus to help here), with the third attending to spelling and grammar.

Sum It Up: When reviewing the paragraphs they have written, a good starting point is for students to read each paragraph and attempt to sum up its main point in a single line. If this is not possible, their readers will most likely have difficulty following their train of thought too and the paragraph needs to be overhauled.

Let It Breathe: When possible, encourage students to allow some time for their essay to ‘breathe’ before returning to it for editing purposes. This may require some skilful time management on the part of the student, for example, a student rush-writing the night before the deadline does not lend itself to effective editing. Fresh eyes are one of the sharpest tools in the writer’s toolbox.

Read It Aloud: This time-tested editing method is a great way for students to identify mistakes and typos in their work. We tend to read things more slowly when reading aloud giving us the time to spot errors. Also, when we read silently our minds can often fill in the gaps or gloss over the mistakes that will become apparent when we read out loud.

Phone a Friend: Peer editing is another great way to identify errors that our brains may miss when reading our own work. Encourage students to partner up for a little ‘you scratch my back, I scratch yours’.

Use Tech Tools: We need to ensure our students have the mental tools to edit their own work and for this they will need a good grasp of English grammar and punctuation. However, there are also a wealth of tech tools such as spellcheck and grammar checks that can offer a great once-over option to catch anything students may have missed in earlier editing rounds.

Putting the Jewels on Display: While some struggle to edit, others struggle to let go. There comes a point when it is time for students to release their work to the reader. They must learn to relinquish control after the creation is complete. This will be much easier to achieve if the student feels that they have done everything in their control to ensure their essay is representative of the best of their abilities and if they have followed the advice here, they should be confident they have done so.

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7 Tips to Teach Essay Writing to Your Children

Writing is one of the most important skills for your child’s education. The unfortunate thing is that classroom settings often don’t provide enough practice time to really hone those writing skills. Experts from Ace Papers can provide good lessons and instruction, but there’s still a lot of slack for parents to pick up. Follow these seven tips to teach essay writing to your children.

Refresh on basic writing skills

Before you dive into essay writing, make sure your child has a good grasp on the basic elements of writing. Make sure they know the importance of things such as proper spelling and the rules of grammar. Remember to teach them these concepts at an age appropriate level, you don’t need to deliver a huge lecture. Be patient and correct them when they make a mistake and explain what the proper way to do things is. These fundamentals are the basic building blocks that you’ll be building their essay skills on. Here is an assortment of ideas to choose research paper help , combine or alter in order to come up with the answer that works best for your kid.

Start with a thesis

“Explaining an abstract concept such as a thesis to child can be challenging, but it’s a necessary understanding if they are to write an essay. Give them clear direction and simple examples to help explain what a thesis is and why it’s so important to an essay. Provide some prompts to get them started or give them some examples of what a good thesis statement is,” writes Carolyn Kirsch, educator at Academized . Try and emphasize that the thesis is the core of an essay, everything else is built out from it.

Show them how to write an outline

Your outline is a master plan for your essay and will include all the important elements. A lot of children aren’t comfortable expressing their thoughts in writing, and an outline is a great way to encourage them and show them the logical context of their essay. Show them the basic structure, including the introduction, main body, and conclusion. Explain to them that the main body is where they will make their arguments and the conclusion should be a thoughtful summary of their main points.

Encourage them to read

One of the best ways for your child to improve their writing is simply by teaching them to love reading. Reading is great because it gives them plenty of good writing examples to soak up and learn from. Reading is also a good way to increase their vocabulary and that is key for improving writing skills. The more your child reads the more they will learn about how sentences work together and the stronger their essay writing skills will be.

Practice lots

Writing practice is very important to building essay writing skills. A lot of kids don’t get very much writing practice in the classroom. Teachers will explain the basics and give them some exercises, but the time spent writing in the classroom is very limited. Encourage your child to write at home. Help them by giving them a theme to write about for the day. The next day, you can build off that theme by having them write an essay about it.

Use technology to help your child

Chances are you associate technology with distracting your child from reading and writing. But used properly, certain technologies can be very helpful to improving your child’s essay writing skills. Don’t be afraid to let them use the tablet if they prefer to read and write using that device. Just remember though to ensure your child doesn’t copy information from other resources online. We asked  online expert  Adam Collins regarding how lenient colleges & schools are when it comes to plagiarism in essays, he said “Most establishments now have comprehensive plagiarism checkers when marking essays, its important children steer clear of the temptation on copy a sentence of two from different resources, as this will now be flagged easily by the tools. Pinterest can also be a great tool because it is very useful for organizing materials, and since essay writing involves research, Pinterest can be very helpful.

Online tools can help teach your kid essay writing

There are a lot of resources on the web that can help you teach essay writing to your child. Here are a few to get started with:

• ViaWriting and WritingPopulist – These grammar resources are great for simplifying the writing process and making grammar a bit more approachable.
• BigAssignments and EssayRoo – Proofreading is something a lot of children struggle with, and it requires a lot of attention to detail. These proofreading tools, suggested by Revieweal , can help.
• StudyDemic and StateofWriting – Read through these blogs with your child and you’ll get access to lots of helpful suggestions on essay writing.
• BoomEssays and UKWritings – These are editing tools that have been reviewed in Boomessays review and are very helpful at catching the mistakes you are likely to miss on your own.
• MyWritingWay and LetsGoandLearn – Check out these academic writing guides for help teaching your child to write an essay. They are simple and will walk your kid through the writing process step by step.

Conclusion The writing skills you teach your kid now will serve them for the rest of their life. Writing is a huge part of success not just in high school, but especially in college and the working world. Use these seven tips to teach essay writing to your children.

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Grace Carter is a mom who works remotely at  Coursework Writing Service  and Paper Fellows websites. There she manages blog posts, works with a team of proofreaders. Also, Grace teaches academic writing at the Elite Assignment Help services

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My Kid Can’t Write an Essay Without Having a Meltdown

She gets overwhelmed every time—but breaking down the assignment into smaller steps could help her manage it.

Editor’s Note: Every Tuesday, Abby Freireich and Brian Platzer take questions from readers about their kids’ education. Have one? Email them at [email protected].

Dear Abby and Brian,

My daughter is in ninth grade and is really struggling with essay writing. English, history, the subject doesn’t matter—she has a meltdown every time. She just stares at the screen and doesn’t know where to start.

I try to remember what I learned in high school about the Roman empire or Robert Frost to get her going. I’ve tried to leave her alone, or to sit there doing the work along with her. None of it ever seems to help. I find myself dreading her getting an essay assignment, because whenever she does, the night before it’s due nearly always ends with her in tears or yelling at me.

What can I do?

Julia Virginia

Dear Julia,

Seeing your daughter so upset when confronted with writing assignments can be painful. We appreciate your instinct to help, but neither leaving your daughter alone nor sitting there doing the work along with her is the right approach. What will help is taking an assignment that overwhelms her and breaking it down into a series of small, manageable steps that she can do on her own. The goal is not to get an essay written no matter what, but to set her up for being an independent, confident student who doesn’t rely on you at every turn.

You’ll want to sit down with her and say something like “I know essay writing has been really hard, but it will help if you can think about it as a set of smaller steps and budget enough time for each.” Then go through these steps with her:

• Read the material, highlighting important points and taking notes.

This is the starting point for any good essay writing. Suggest that even before she is assigned a writing prompt, she begins taking notes on the material as she reads it. Annotation should serve as a conversation with the text: She should mark significant or reaction-provoking passages and jot down a few words about why they are noteworthy.

• Review the notes, looking for one thread that ties everything together.

This is how she will begin building her thesis. Teachers sometimes disagree over whether students should start with a working thesis and then find evidence to build their case, or start with examples and see where they lead. We believe that the thesis and examples should be developed together; as your daughter narrows down evidence, her thesis can evolve.

• Write topic sentences for each of the body paragraphs, and then match topic sentences with examples and analysis to build an outline.

Your daughter should think about defending her thesis with a series of sub-arguments, each expressed as a topic sentence for her body paragraphs. Many students have difficulty connecting their arguments to evidence, because they are inclined to summarize the material rather than critically evaluate it. Your daughter can ask herself what her examples reveal about her topic sentences and then delve into the importance of word choice and literary devices as is relevant.

• Write introduction and conclusion paragraphs.

With topic sentences, examples, and analysis for each body paragraph together in outline form, your daughter can move on to her introduction and conclusion. The focus of her introduction should be general background information leading up to the thesis, and the conclusion should offer new insight into the significance of the topic and a parting thought for the reader to ponder.

• Use the outline, introductory paragraph, and conclusion to write a first draft.

Once she has completed an outline, she’ll have a straightforward road map for writing a draft with more thoroughly developed ideas.

• Look over the draft twice: once to ensure that the argument flows logically and a second time to eliminate errors in grammar and syntax, as well as to sharpen word choice.

We recommend that all editing be done while reading the work aloud from a printed draft, pencil in hand. Once these revisions are implemented, she’ll have a final draft ready to go.

If a single major assignment becomes six minor ones, your daughter is far less likely to feel overwhelmed. This process, from start to finish, will take about a week, so she should plan accordingly. With a calendar in front of her, she should look at what assignments she has coming up for the rest of the semester and mark deadlines for each of these steps so that she won’t have to rush at the end. Remember that writing always takes longer than it seems it should. Helping your daughter plan well in advance should allow her to approach writing with less trepidation and instead see it as a process composed of clear, manageable steps.

As she does this more and more, she’ll find that her belief in herself will grow—and you won’t cringe when you hear about the English essay due next week.

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How to teach your children essay writing in 5 steps

When you sit down to teach your children essay writing you might not initially know where to begin. Essay writing is the cornerstone of any education and half or more of the subjects your kids are likely to tackle in their school lifetime will require essay writing skills. Writing tips for kids are something that will take them from being a mediocre student to one that shines. Confidence when writing is something that can truly be learned – very few people are born with this important skill. That’s good news, in fact. Like anything worthwhile doing, all great writing takes is practice and dedication.

How to inspire your kids to love writing

Teach Your Children Essay Writing in 5 Steps

Step 1: start with basics.

Lots of kids aren’t great with grammar. Grammar takes time to learn and many parents and guardians simply don’t correct their young children enough, which is doing them a disservice. Some parents might even find these little mistakes cute, funny or charming – but that’s where very young children get into trouble later in life. Some common grammatical errors made by children are listed by writer Amanda Morin here . Phrases like, ““I goed to the store with Daddy so we could buy traps to catch the mouses ,” or, “I’d rather have cookies then cake.” You need to correct your children and equip them with the basics of spelling and grammar. You don’t have to deliver a massive lecture on writing concepts or run the whole grammar gauntlet in one day. Do this step by step, correct them gently when they make a mistake and select grammar and spelling practices which are appropriate for their grade, age, and essay requirements.

Step 2: Create an outline

When spending time with young children we can see them struggling to find the correct words when speaking; this is even more apparent when they’re tasked with writing. The vast majority of children are not initially confident when expressing their thoughts on paper, so it’s an important step to teach your children essay writing in a sensible way. To help your children with essay writing, teach them how to create a structure of the message or story they want to tell. When they perfect this, creating an outline for an essay becomes easier. Once your kids understand “logical context”, their mission is half accomplished. Impart the importance of structure: an introduction, body of the essay (including arguments and structured thoughts), and a well-thought out conclusion. Have them practise with something fun, such as an age appropriate story or fairytale.

Step 3: Provide examples and practise a lot

Give your kids examples! Children work better when they have some examples of what they are trying to do lying in front of them. This tactic, called “learning by example”, will help your children get more ideas about creating their own essay papers. Work on these together and add some creativity to the task. If your kids are young, find fun examples of coordinated text and ask them to point out what structure a piece of writing has – for example, where the beginning, middle and end is. Make sure you don’t overload your kids with tasks either; do the work in small bursts and keep them engaged. Reward them with something fun, such as stickers or colourful pens, or even a new book or two.

Step 4: Don’t push your kids too much

Essay writing is a very hard and complex task; even most adults find it challenging! Striving for perfection is never the best way to get your children immersed in a writing task. Give them plenty of breaks and lots of encouragement. When they make an error, make sure you are gentle with them so you don’t affect their confidence levels. Setting them up for success in this way will give them more confidence at school. Praise them when they do well and offer positive reinforcement.

Step 5: Read to your children and encourage them to read on their own

It should go without saying but all great writers started as readers. Make reading fun! When kids are little (even from when they are babies) read to them: fairy tales, interesting stories and books designed for kids. Find out what subjects your kids love; they might surprise you! Do they love dinosaurs, science, bugs, or stories about witches and wizards? Choose age appropriate books that they will find a genuine interest in. When you are reading to your children, you’ll notice that they’ll definitely catch some words out of the text, and even remember them almost perfectly. This increases their word capacity and vocabulary. Educate your children to love reading on their own. Give them a couple of different books of one or two genres, and ask their opinions.

Essay writing skills help children throughout their school lives

It’s true – writing can be as difficult a subject to teach and assess as it is to learn and for this reason, you, as a parent, need a lot of patience while teaching your children. Remember to enjoy your time together and build a stronger rapport with your kids. This is where parent involvement can make a big difference to their learning outcomes.

When you teach your children essay writing you are giving them a lifelong skill. Encouraging your children to develop strong writing skills at a young age is worthwhile and may make all the difference to their future school success. Essay writing skills can have a lifelong positive impact on a child’s writing and may make essay writing an easier and more enjoyable process throughout their lives.

Essay writing skills for pre-teens and teens

Once your children reach the age of ten, their essay writing needs may ramp up as school requires more of them. However, some students still struggle with essay writing skills in junior or primary school with one study revealling , that “even with spell check and a thesaurus on hand, just 27% of students are able to write well-developed essays with proper language use.” It might be worthwhile to encourage older children to seek out help and to gain lots of feedback. Advise them to break tasks down into workable sections and give themselves ample time to complete tasks. Use these 12 tips to create a school essay when you get stuck.

12 tips on creating an essay outline and plan

• Before you begin: Clearly and carefully read the essay task before you begin
• Beginning, middle & end: Think about narrative, structure and formatting; and then create a writing plan
• Experts: Remember to include arguments from expert references and highlight your main points with examples
• Individual expression: Express your own individual thoughts on the essay topic, framed in context of the wider narrative
• Problem solving: Look to solve problems that arise in different, unique ways (think ‘outside the square’)
• Thoroughness: Analyse what is required of you and ensure the task has been covered end-to-end

Most school essay requirements are similar, when you break them down to their bare elements. Master these simple points:

• Cover a topic fully: make sure you consider all relevant arguments and include a sufficient number of individual ideas, based on your research.
• Be critical! Edit out all info that isn’t necessary to the final draft and be select only the most important arguments for your final essay.
• Annotate: Find evidence and examples; use thorough research from accredited sources.
• Planning: Preparing a plan will help you write logically and consistently as well as adhere to the overall essay structure.
• Proofing: Avoid mistakes; proofread your content at least twice before submitting.
• Formatting & flow: Make sure you include a strong introduction and satisfying conclusion.

How Do I Become a Better Writer, Fast?

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How to Teach Essay Writing

Last Updated: June 26, 2023 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Christopher Taylor, PhD . Christopher Taylor is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of English at Austin Community College in Texas. He received his PhD in English Literature and Medieval Studies from the University of Texas at Austin in 2014. There are 12 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 89,491 times.

Teaching students how to write an essay is a big undertaking, but this is a crucial process for any high school or college student to learn. Start by assigning essays to read and then encourage students to choose an essay topic of their own. Spend class time helping students understand what makes a good essay. Then, use your assignments to guide students through writing their essays.

Choosing Genres and Topics

• Narrative, which is a non-fiction account of a personal experience. This is a good option if you want your students to share a story about something they did, such as a challenge they overcame or a favorite vacation they took. [2] X Trustworthy Source Purdue Online Writing Lab Trusted resource for writing and citation guidelines Go to source
• Expository , which is when you investigate an idea, discuss it at length, and make an argument about it. This might be a good option if you want students to explore a specific concept or a controversial subject. [3] X Trustworthy Source Purdue Online Writing Lab Trusted resource for writing and citation guidelines Go to source
• Descriptive , which is when you describe a person, place, object, emotion, experience, or situation. This can be a good way to allow your students to express themselves creatively through writing. [4] X Trustworthy Source Purdue Online Writing Lab Trusted resource for writing and citation guidelines Go to source
• Argumentative or persuasive essays require students to take a stance on a topic and make an argument to support that stance. This is different from an expository essay in that students won't be discussing a concept at length and then taking a position. The goal of an argumentative essay is to take a position right away and defend it with evidence. [5] X Trustworthy Source Purdue Online Writing Lab Trusted resource for writing and citation guidelines Go to source

• Make sure to select essays that are well-structured and interesting so that your students can model their own essays after these examples. Include essays written by former students, if you can, as well as professionally written essays.

Tip : Readers come in many forms. You can find readers that focus on a specific topic, such as food or pop culture. You can also find reader/handbook combos that will provide general information on writing along with the model essays.

• For example, for each of the essays you assign your students, you could ask them to identify the author's main point or focus, the structure of the essay, the author's use of sources, and the effect of the introduction and conclusion.
• Ask the students to create a reverse outline of the essay to help them understand how to construct a well-written essay. They'll identify the thesis, the main points of the body paragraphs, the supporting evidence, and the concluding statement. Then, they'll present this information in an outline. [8] X Research source

• For example, if you have assigned your students a narrative essay, then encourage them to choose a story that they love to tell or a story they have always wanted to tell but never have.
• If your students are writing argumentative essays, encourage them to select a topic that they feel strongly about or that they'd like to learn more about so that they can voice their opinion.

Explaining the Parts of an Essay

• For example, if you read an essay that begins with an interesting anecdote, highlight that in your class discussion of the essay. Ask students how they could integrate something like that into their own essays and have them write an anecdotal intro in class.
• Or, if you read an essay that starts with a shocking fact or statistic that grabs readers' attention, point this out to your students. Ask them to identify the most shocking fact or statistic related to their essay topic.

• For example, you could provide a few model thesis statements that students can use as templates and then ask them to write a thesis for their topic as an in-class activity or have them post it on an online discussion board.

Tip : Even though the thesis statement is only 1 sentence, this can be the most challenging part of writing an essay for some students. Plan to spend a full class session on writing thesis statements and review the information multiple times as well.

• For example, you could spend a class session going over topic sentences, and then look at how the authors of model essays have used topic sentences to introduce their claims. Then, identify where the author provides support for a claim and how they expand on the source.

• For example, you might direct students to a conclusion in a narrative essay that reflects on the significance of an author's experience. Ask students to write a paragraph where they reflect on the experience they are writing about and turn it in as homework or share it on class discussion board.
• For an expository or argumentative essay, you might show students conclusions that restate the most important aspect of a topic or that offer solutions for the future. Have students write their own conclusions that restate the most important parts of their subject or that outline some possible solutions to the problem.

Guiding Students Through the Writing Process

• Try giving students a sample timeline for how to work on their essays. For example, they might start brainstorming a topic, gathering sources (if required), and taking notes 4 weeks before the paper is due.
• Then, students might begin drafting 2 weeks before the paper is due with a goal of having a full draft 1 week before the essay's due date.
• Students could then plan to start revising their drafts 5 days before the essay is due. This will provide students with ample time to read through their papers a few times and make changes as needed.

• Freewriting, which is when you write freely about anything that comes to mind for a set amount of time, such as 10, 15, or 20 minutes.
• Clustering, which is when you write your topic or topic idea on a piece of paper and then use lines to connect that idea to others.
• Listing, which is when you make a list of any and all ideas related to a topic and ten read through it to find helpful information for your paper.
• Questioning, such as by answering the who, what, when, where, why, and how of their topic.
• Defining terms, such as identifying all of the key terms related to their topic and writing out definitions for each one.

• For example, if your students are writing narrative essays, then it might make the most sense for them to describe the events of a story chronologically.
• If students are writing expository or argumentative essays, then they might need to start by answering the most important questions about their topic and providing background information.
• For a descriptive essay, students might use spatial reasoning to describe something from top to bottom, or organize the descriptive paragraphs into categories for each of the 5 senses, such as sight, sound, smell, taste, and feel.

• For example, if you have just gone over different types of brainstorming strategies, you might ask students to choose 1 that they like and spend 10 minutes developing ideas for their essay.

• Try having students post a weekly response to a writing prompt or question that you assign.
• You may also want to create a separate discussion board where students can post ideas about their essay and get feedback from you and their classmates.

• You could also assign specific parts of the writing process as homework, such as requiring students to hand in a first draft as a homework assignment.

• For example, you might suggest reading the paper backward 1 sentence at a time or reading the paper out loud as a way to identify issues with organization and to weed out minor errors. [21] X Trustworthy Source University of North Carolina Writing Center UNC's on-campus and online instructional service that provides assistance to students, faculty, and others during the writing process Go to source
• Try peer-review workshops that ask students to review each others' work. Students can work in pairs or groups during the workshop. Provide them with a worksheet, graphic organizer, or copy of the assignment rubric to guide their peer-review.

Tip : Emphasize the importance of giving yourself at least a few hours away from the essay before you revise it. If possible, it is even better to wait a few days. After this time passes, it is often easier to spot errors and work out better ways of describing things.

Community Q&A

• Students often need to write essays as part of college applications, for assignments in other courses, and when applying for scholarships. Remind your students of all the ways that improving their essay writing skills can benefit them. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

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• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/academic_writing/essay_writing/index.html
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/academic_writing/essay_writing/narrative_essays.html
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/academic_writing/essay_writing/expository_essays.html
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/academic_writing/essay_writing/descriptive_essays.html
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/academic_writing/essay_writing/argumentative_essays.html
• ↑ https://wac.colostate.edu/jbw/v1n2/petrie.pdf
• ↑ https://www.uww.edu/learn/restiptool/improve-student-writing
• ↑ https://twp.duke.edu/sites/twp.duke.edu/files/file-attachments/reverse-outline.original.pdf
• ↑ https://www.niu.edu/citl/resources/guides/instructional-guide/brainstorming.shtml
• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/faculty-resources/tips-on-teaching-writing/situating-student-writers/
• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/faculty-resources/tips-on-teaching-writing/in-class-writing-exercises/
• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/revising-drafts/

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How to write a perfect essay

Need to write an essay? Does the assignment feel as big as climbing Mount Everest? Fear not. You’re up to the challenge! The following step-by step tips from the Nat Geo Kids Almanac will help you with this monumental task. 

Sometimes the subject matter of your essay is assigned to you, sometimes it’s not. Either way, you have to decide what you want to say. Start by brainstorming some ideas, writing down any thoughts you have about the subject. Then read over everything you’ve come up with and consider which idea you think is the strongest. Ask yourself what you want to write about the most. Keep in mind the goal of your essay. Can you achieve the goal of the assignment with this topic? If so, you’re good to go.

WRITE A TOPIC SENTENCE

This is the main idea of your essay, a statement of your thoughts on the subject. Again, consider the goal of your essay. Think of the topic sentence as an introduction that tells your reader what the rest of your essay will be about.

OUTLINE YOUR IDEAS

Once you have a good topic sentence, you then need to support that main idea with more detailed information, facts, thoughts, and examples. These supporting points answer one question about your topic sentence—“Why?” This is where research and perhaps more brainstorming come in. Then organize these points in the way you think makes the most sense, probably in order of importance. Now you have an outline for your essay.

ON YOUR MARK, GET SET, WRITE!

Follow your outline, using each of your supporting points as the topic sentence of its own paragraph. Use descriptive words to get your ideas across to the reader. Go into detail, using specific information to tell your story or make your point. Stay on track, making sure that everything you include is somehow related to the main idea of your essay. Use transitions to make your writing flow.

Finish your essay with a conclusion that summarizes your entire essay and 5 restates your main idea.

PROOFREAD AND REVISE

Check for errors in spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and grammar. Look for ways to make your writing clear, understandable, and interesting. Use descriptive verbs, adjectives, or adverbs when possible. It also helps to have someone else read your work to point out things you might have missed. Then make the necessary corrections and changes in a second draft. Repeat this revision process once more to make your final draft as good as you can.

Download the pdf .

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Teach Your Child Essay Writing in 6 Steps

Start with the basics.

Before you dive into that essay you’ll want to make sure your child has a good grasp on basic writing concepts. Grammar and spelling are the foundation on which you can help your child build that first essay. Once you’re satisfied with their understanding of these concepts, begin teaching them what a thesis is, and how to write one. “A lot of kids have trouble writing in a focused way, so help guide them and keep them on track. You’ll probably want to reinforce the idea that the thesis guides everything else they write in their essay,” recommends Paul Winston, educator at PaperFellows .

An outline is a plan or a description of the essay, showing the most important parts of it. Every essay includes an introduction, exposition, and conclusion. Outlines help people get organized when writing, and this should help your child as well. Write down the topic and their main goal which helps them clearly identify their main idea and their opinions about it. There are plenty of outline types out there, so you can easily find one that best suits your child. Then all you have to do is pull it together – creating a list of all the parts that will be in the essay.

Get them practicing

Kick start your child’s creative process by giving them some examples. It’s a lot easier to show them a concrete example, rather than trying to explain what you want them to do. As they practice they will get closer and closer to where you want them to be. Practicing is where the real improvement will come from, but be sure not to overwork them. Give them breaks and reward them for their hard work.

There are plenty of ways in which they can develop their essay writing skills. You just have to find something that sparks their interest. For instance, if your child likes video games, you can ask him to write a report on that. If they like books or comic books or TV shows, ask them to write reports where they'll compare two similar stories etc.

Encourage reading

Reading is a great way for your child to soak up all kinds of information about vocabulary and how sentences work together. The more you read to your child , or they read on their own, the better their writing will become. If they’re just not showing an interest in reading , explore your child’s favorite things in order find the right material. Once you get them interested and reading on their own, you’ll notice them picking up new words, which can be very exciting and rewarding for a parent.

Harness the power of technology

Technology gets a bad rap for distracting kids (and adults) from reading and writing, but technology can be a useful tool in enhancing your child’s experiences with the written word. Pinterest can be useful for the writing process. Your child will be identifying lots of topics and resources they may want to use for their essay, and Pinterest is a fantastic way of organizing those ideas. Just create a few boards and show your child how to pin sources onto a board. You might even find that the reason your child is struggling with an essay is because they prefer using an iPad to writing on paper or a laptop.

Try out these resources for extra help teaching essay writing

Writing can be tricky, and so can teaching writing to children. Check out these online tools for help teaching your children essay writing:

• StateofWriting & Studydemic

These are grammar resources you can use to check over your child’s writing for grammatical mistakes.

• Boomessays & Essayroo

These are online proofreading tools, listed by Simplegrad , you can use to make sure your child’s essay is polished and error-free.

• ViaWriting & Academadvisor

Check out these academic blogs for ideas and suggestions on how to teach your children essay writing. There are lots of posts here by parents who have successfully helped their children with essay writing.

• Academized & UKWritings

These are editing tools, recommended in Academized review , you can use to go over your child’s writing for typos and other mistakes.

• My Writing Way & Writing Populist

Check out these essay writing guides for help improving the writing in your child’s essay. If you struggle with writing yourself, these guides can prepare you to help your child with their essay.

Though there might be challenges as you teach your child the methods of essay writing, do your best to make the learning process fun, and eventually your child’s understanding will grow to excelling at essay writing.

about the author... Grace Carter is a teacher at  Big Assignments  and  Assignment Help  services. She teaches academic writing and curates edtech processes. Also, Grace tutors at  OX Essays  writing website. 

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How to Teach Essay Writing to Kids? Here’re the Best Guidance for Parents

Essay writing for kids is an important skill essential for academic excellence and personality development. Children with good essay writing skills are able to develop expression and creativity through language and ideas.

But not all kids get the opportunity to practice and learn essay writing as an important task of their curriculum. This is because we often assume that children need to get done with essay writing within a particular time frame, but every child requires his or her own time to think and write.

Children should be given plenty of time to practice essay writing, which can happen perfectly at home under the guidance of the parents.

Tips to Teach Essay Writing for Kids

As a parent, you can help improve your child’s essay writing skills through regular practice at home. To help you, here we have some important tips for you to teach essay writing for kids:

Always Start with the Basic

Essay writing for kids requires the basic knowledge of grammar and sentence formation; without these basics, your child may end up getting confused with the extra knowledge of essay formats and structures. Therefore, before moving ahead, improving your child’s basic grammar and sentence formation is necessary.

It is really necessary to build excellent writing skills, and kids need to develop the knowledge of sentence formation as per their age or school grade. For this, you can boost their reading exercise; the more kids read, the more they get to know about sentences and increase their vocabulary.

Also Read: Kids Personality Development Classes: Help Them Transform Their Personalities For a Better Future

Teach about Creating an Outline of the Essay

Creating an outline of an essay can help your children to follow an uninterrupted mode of writing. When your child knows what to write and how to write it, it helps save them time and effort and provides them with a structure for a guided progression. Through a rough outline of an essay, kids are more active in generating ideas linked with a particular part of the outline.

For an outline, they can make a basic skeleton of what they have to include in an introduction, in the body (deciding how many paragraphs to write), and in the end, the conclusion.

Also Read: Best Online Coding Classes for Kids: A Complete Guide to Get the Best

Give Space for Practice

For kids, learning is a process of mistakes and improvements. Instructions alone may not be enough for them, but regular practice can bring them closer to perfection. Make sure to give your kids plenty of familiar topics on a daily basis.

Be Patient, and Avoid Overwork

Ask them to create outlines and write essays for more related topics and their immediate environment. Instead of giving them your direct opinions, be gentle and appreciate their efforts. Give them your advice on how their essay can be reorganised and written in a better language. Try to keep a stable balance between practice and breaks. Make sure not to overwork your kids.

Essay Writing for Kids: Basics and Writing Formats

What is essay writing? It is a written piece that describes, argues, and analyses a subject or an idea. It is composed of three basic elements: introduction, body, and conclusion . Let’s see how these three components form an essay as a whole.

Considering essay writing for kids, suppose a child is asked to write an essay on the title, ‘Save Environment’; then, the essay writing formats for kids will be:

Introduction

The introduction should have two important constituents:

#a.  A sentence that will clearly tell what the essay is about. Here, this sentence can be,

“Our environment is being affected rapidly by human activities; it is our duty to save the environment we live in.”

#b. A sentence that tells your point of view on the topic. It should be attractive enough for the audience.

“Environmental damage is causing global warming, floods, droughts, and other crises around the world.”

The body of an essay follows the introduction and includes detailed information on the topic. It can be divided into three-four paragraphs, depending on the word limit. For the topic ‘save the environment’, the following can be included in the body:

Paragraph 1

What causes a threat to the environment? Mention the harmful human activities, like excessive industrialisation, deforestation, and growing pollution.

Paragraph 2

What are the effects on the environment?

Mention global warming, growing diseases, and scarcity of resources.

Paragraph 3

Why do we need to save the environment?

Elaborate how resources are depleting, which will cause scarcity for future generations; explain the effects of pollution on human health; mention how global warming is leading to disasters like earthquakes and melting of glaciers.

Paragraph 4

How can we save the environment?

Add activities like rainwater harvesting, use of public transport (less carbon production), abolition of plastic substances, use of environment-friendly daily objects, like wooden brush and comb, use of steel buckets and others.

The conclusion of an essay summarises the whole essay in two or three lines. Avoid mentioning any new point or idea in the conclusion. You can also rephrase the topic in an elaborated way. Let’s see how we can conclude the above essay.

Adopting eco-friendly activities and general awareness around the globe can make a huge impact on our degraded environment. It’s the need of the hour to stand together and save our environment.

How to Write a Good Essay? 

In order to boost your child’s essay writing skills, you should teach the following tips:

#. Understand the requirement of the essay through the title.

#. Create a rough outline of the paragraphs you want to include.

#. Prepare your reference material through good research.

#. Follow the three basic components of an essay: the introduction, body, and conclusion.

#. After finishing, always proofread thoroughly. This will help them spot grammatical mistakes and poor organisation of paragraphs.

#. Make sure to add some real life-based examples.

#. Focus on the language and see if it is clear enough.

Also Read: Scratch Coding for Kids: Simplifying the Concepts of Coding for Super Kids

Good essay writing skills come from practise; hence, the basics mentioned above of essay writing and plenty of practice at home can help your child become an excellent writer in the future. Don’t forget to stay patient with your children’s growth and keep following their progress. At The Real School Of Montessori , we mentor children with personalised training programmes, which aims at making children problem solvers and thinkers. For more information on our one-on-one mentoring programmes, visit The Real School Of Montessori today.

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Shilpa is a professional web content writer and is in deep love with travelling. She completed her mass communication degree and is now dedicatedly playing with words to guide her readers to get the best for themselves. Developing educational content for UPSC, IELTS aspirants from breakthrough research work is her forte. Strongly driven by her zodiac sign Sagittarius, Shilpa loves to live her life on her own notes and completely agrees with the idea of ‘live and let live. Apart from writing and travelling, most of the time she can be seen in the avatar of 'hooman' mom to her pets and street dogs or else you can also catch her wearing the toque blanche and creating magic in the kitchen on weekends.

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Teaching Essay Writing - Where do I start?

The Write Foundation is a tried and proven homeschool writing curriculum that lays a solid writing foundation and develops competent, confident writers, even with students who were clueless on how to write. Students learn organizational groundwork for writing simple paragraphs and then advance to college level essays. With a variety of topics and types of paragraphs this curriculum guides you as you teach how to logically and easily write formal papers that “Wow!” professors.

Every lesson in TWF is arranged with detailed, specific guidelines, and gives you the necessary tools to teach the lessons and assist students while they complete their independent work. The Write Foundation provides detailed lesson plans for you to easily follow.

• Daily Schedules : every lesson divided into instruction groups.
• Teacher Presentation : pages for you to use when presenting the lesson (included in the instruction manual and separately in digital format to be used to fit your situation)
• Student Worksheets : 1 set is provided with each level of instruction.Pages which guide students both during the lesson and their independent work. Student Assignments: extra instruction and reminders to guide students as they complete their independent work. Checklists for students to use to edit their work.

The instruction manuals provide:

• Step-by-step teaching instruction for you to follow.
• Examples of possible correct answers.
• Example brainstorms, outlines and paragraphs.

Additional Resources are also sent to you with the following and more:

• Games: instructions for 1 or more students
• Grading Checklists: to help you grade their work.
• Grading System: if you need help with record keeping.

When a student is working on the correct level, intensive teacher instruction drops significantly as the year progresses.

• Students understand and retain more when they work at a level where learning comes easily for them.
• Some students need more teacher help for a while, but many others become more independent quickly.
• Students gain independence as good writing habits are solidified and they are on their way to becoming independent proficient writers.

Mom’s work load is determined by placing students on the right level. Try the free sample lessons before you purchase the curriculum to help determine which level is right for your students.

Entry Level Creating Sentences: Students use fun educational games and activities, while learning to compose and develop sentences by putting words and phrases together like pieces in a puzzle. Students will not be asking, “But what do I write about?”

Sentence to Paragraph Level 1 : Students learn to write better sentences, which describe and inform, while they learn the core basics of writing simple paragraphs using the writing process.

Paragraph Writing Level 2 : Students continue to develop their sentence and paragraph writing skills using the writing process, while advancing to multi-paragraph formal writing.

Essay Writing Level 3 : Students fine tune and develop mature writing skills, so they can easily write a well organized multi-paragraph college level essay that “Wows!” everyone.

See Suggested Age Levels for Homeschool Writing for more specific guidelines for each level.

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Tips for Teaching Your Kids How to Write an Essay

By Sandra Miller

Your kids may not be thrilled when they are first faced with an essay writing task, but writing skills are very important for their future educational and emotional development. Although it can be difficult for you to teach them how to write an essay and start loving that activity, your effort won’t be left without results. The most important thing to keep in mind is that children have difficulties in expressing themselves in a structured from that requires crafting strong sentences.

If essay writing is mission impossible for your children and you really want to teach them how to write, you should work on your own skills first. You need an organized and methodical approach that will make it easy for them to understand what you are trying to say.

Start with the basics

The first thing you need to make sure of is that your children have a basic understanding of spelling and grammar concepts, which are appropriate for their grade, age, and essay writing requirements. If your children’s education lacks these building blocks, you will only confuse them with the attempt of teaching them more complicated writing skills. The result will be nothing more than frustration to both you and your children.

After you make sure that their knowledge is ready to be advanced to the essay writing stage, you should start by introducing the concept of a thesis. The first difficulty children face is directing their essays and keeping them focused. If your children struggle with writing concepts, you can provide thesis prompts or thesis statements for them. Once your children advance their writing skills, they will easily think of their own thesis statements. The thesis should be the main point around which the essay is written. Make sure to explain to them that every page, every paragraph, and every sentence within the essay, no matter how short or long it is, should be associated to the thesis statement.

Advanced stages: Creating an outline

The next step of the process is explaining your kids how to create an outline of the writing. The outline will help them maintain the logical progression from the beginning to the end of the paper. Once your kids understand sentence construction, they may have difficulties in keeping the logical context within the paper because they will be focused solely on creating sentence units that are grammatically correct, expressive, and cohesive. You should teach them how to relate those sentences to one another and stick to the outline.

Explain the meaning and purpose of the introductory and concluding paragraphs, and tell them how to structure the paragraphs in between in a logical order.

Key to success: examples and practice

If you provide examples of good essays to your children, they will immediately get ideas on creating their own papers. They won’t understand what you are trying to say if your approach to teaching is based solely on explanations. You need to be as hands-on as your kids need during the development of their first essays. Once they develop an increased confidence in their abilities, they will be able to work on their own. It is easy to find essay examples online and use them to show your kids what works and what doesn’t work in essay writing.

Practice is the key to perfection. There isn’t a more effective way of teaching children how to write essays than helping them practice as many times as possible. You should make the process interesting, so they won’t see it as a torture. Once you provide them with the conceptual foundation of knowledge, you should help them implement that knowledge through practice.

Remember: striving for perfection is out of the question when you’re teaching your kids something. Don’t put too much pressure on them and don’t require impossible achievements. Essay writing is a very useful skill that will increase their vocabulary and improve their skills of grammar, so you should approach the teaching process with those humble goals on your mind.

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Interesting infographic how to write an argumentative essay http://www.essay-profy.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/how_to_write_essay.png

very helpful. Thank you

Before essay writing my son always looks for examples. Is it bad?

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There are different writing courses online that can truly provide parents and kids interactive education in terms of writing, grammar and comprehension; doing different types of literary pieces can really give voices to their creative minds and opening an opportunity for their growth. Helpful article!

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Very useful, thanks! Yes, practice is the best approach. But I disagree that essay writing skills is compulsory for everybody. What about tech specializations, if child is a fan of math and physics it’s not good to enforce him to write an essay. Let him do what he want!

Actually, being a fan of maths and physics means you will probably need essay-writing skills MORE. My brother is an engineer, and he just got through telling me how lack of proper organisation and correct language on reports has cost his company thousands of dollars on several occasions. I think we make the mistake of assigning humanities skills only to the humanities and science skills only to the science-driven professions. I work in foreign languages, and these days an engineer. doctor or scientist is as likely (if not more likely) to need a foreign language as a mid-level businessperson. Similarly, engineers, doctors and scientists write many reports both internally and for worldwide consumption. They often have to make presentations, which are based on the same base skills as essay-writing.

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• Knowing the subject

First steps in essay writing for primary school students

It is often difficult to get young learners closer to understanding the main purpose and development of an opinion essay.

Posted by Karina Castro

This resource could become an easy starting point to help them generate ideas and produce consistent lines. A good source of inspiration is essential for this kind of task. A couple of months ago I found an essay in pictures by Neil Gaiman published in The Guardian. It is part of Gaiman’s larger work Art Matters, and of public access. It explains the importance of reading, libraries preservation and daydreaming.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/gallery/2018/sep/06/neil-gaiman-and-chris-riddell-on-why-we-need-libraries-an-essay-in-pictures?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

The use of this material could benefit students both by connecting them with a different kind of literature and encouraging them to write their own ideas on the topic.

1. Start by showing on your classroom screen the different parts of the essay (or print them and paste them all over the classroom). Select students to read them aloud and invite them to make comments and provide their own opinion: Do they agree? What would they add to each sentence? What other ideas would they include?

2. Encourage your students to join in groups and write down their own ideas starting by those of the author. Eg: Reading is important because…; Books are …, etc.

3. Ask students to check grammar and spelling. Help them when necessary.

4. Share their final works.

You may take notes on the board of those sentences whose contents reflect their strongest points of view and guide them to reorder them so that they have a logical connection and result in a clear statement of what they think on the issue.

After that first try, you could encourage your students to write about different topics like:

- Our environment needs our help

- Learning languages is our gate to the world

- A creative mind will always make a free person

You may use any other topic you are working with or they suggest. This time you should let them work on their own: alone, in pairs or in small groups. Make sure they can count on you during the process.

Cross-curricular - Language + Art

As the last step for this task, you could join the Art teacher, who can work with the students to illustrate each of their lines/ideas. The final result would be a real “essay in pictures” which could decórate your classroom, the school’s reception, one of the school’s corridors or, why not, become the central part of the school’s Art Display this year! Give it a try, and writing an opinion essay won’t be that tough (or boring) for your students next time!

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How to teach my child to write an essay

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Navigating the internet, you can find multiple articles about the nuances of writing academic essays and improving the writing skills of adults. However, when teaching children the nuances of essay writing, you should be very careful and attentive. The first knowledge on how to write an essay plays a fundamental role in a kid’s development and further learning.

Thus, the techniques, secrets, and explanations should be as effective as possible. So, when asking yourself, “how do I teach my child to write an essay?” be ready for not-so-hard and exciting work ahead! Also, don’t forget to get computer science assignmen t help or you can find more information on assignment topics to be more free while studying.

Before starting an essay writing journey

Before teaching kids details of essay learning, the initial work is crucial. Although writing skills and techniques are important, a child should know the benefit of writing essays, how to enjoy the process of writing, and what opportunities are available if one succeeds in this activity. For example, understanding the role of a  custom essay writing service  can provide insights into professional writing standards and the various styles and structures used in essays.

Thus, before exploring working tips, let’s have a look at several actions that would prepare the groundwork for the smooth and entertaining teaching:

• Start with familiarizing a kid with the genre of the essay. Find what a child likes the most – stories about wizards or space, adventures or nature, and encourage one’s interest in the genre. Further, tell a kid that anyone can create such captivating texts – it’ll boost their confidence and commitment.
• Become a kid’s superhero – show by your example that writing essays is cool, and many adults do it. Besides, regular writing can be your way of emotional recharging and memory stimulation and even prevent mental health problems!
• Train to write essays without rules : indeed, further, you’ll know how to teach your child to craft essays according to standard requirements, but it’s good to start with something easy. For example, make a deal that you and your kid will write an essa y together or individually, describing the weekend or vacation you’ve spent together. First and foremost, demonstrate that essay writing can be fun!
• You must have patience and encourage your kid even if they make mistakes : after all, our falls teach us something new.

Simplicity and basics of essay writing with kids

So, you’ll start wondering: “how to teach my kid to write an essay, and where should I begin?.” The key to success lies in the basics of essay writing. First, start with evaluating your kid’s writing skills and knowledge.

For instance, assign them to write an essay on any subject and analyze the text together. Explore grammatical errors (often, children repeat their mistakes), and look at the essay’s structure and construction of sentences.

After you work on errors, it is paramount that you teach your kid to:

• Create an outline. This prewriting phase of crafting an essay saves a bunch of time and allows writing the text without losing your way. So, basically, an outline is the plan of your future text – it represents the structure of the essay, including a number of paragraphs, introduction, topic sentences, and conclusion. Due to the outline, your kid won’t be distracted and will stick to the initial plan.
• Develop an insightful thesis statement. In this last sentence in the introductory paragraph, your kid will present the central thought of the essay; therefore, practice creating concise and informative thesis statements.
• Keep the balance. In most cases, essay writing includes strict requirements. The word count, topic, and type of essay are the essential orienteers that an instructor can change. However, there’s an aspect that remains forever stable: your kid’s essay should be balanced. The paragraph size should be the same, and the introduction and conclusion should not exceed the word count of one paragraph. Such nuances are simple to memorize and effectively implement!
• Analyze different sources. Writing essay s often requires learners to read various articles, blogs, or books to craft a response or discussion essay. Therefore, teach your kid to assess various materials: read a piece together and discuss how it relates to the assigned topic. Alternatively, ask your kid to browse the web and find several articles on the same issue. Markedly, technology is one of the greatest advantages for today’s adults and children!

After learning these fundamentals and practicing several times, your child won’t have any difficulty crafting essays. You won’t have to relive this shiver of hesitation asking yourself, “how to help my child write an essay?” a hundred times.

Other effective tips for teaching a child to write an essay

None of us is born a genuine mentor or teacher able to teach a kid to be an excellent writer easily. However, due to some effective tips, even a person with no prior experience in writing can explain to a kid the nuances of writing and, more importantly, explain how to write with joy!

So, pay attention to such recommendations: ● Encourage your kid to read. Don’t limit yourself to essays – any text, either scientific or fiction, can significantly expand one’s vocabulary. ● Share your experience of writing essays when you were a student. Tell your kid what you liked about the process, which topics inspired you, or what writing strategies you used. ● Practice writing by composing essays about your child’s favorite movies or series. For example, assign them to write a response essay after each watched episode. You’ll notice the progress even in the middle of season one! ● Luckily, we live in a digital age when maintaining quality educational assistance is a piece of cake! If you feel that your confidence and experience are not enough, feel free to use the help of expert writing services, whose specialists possess great experience in creating papers of various formats and can consult you about crafting original and properly structured essays. Thus, if you still feel a little lost when your kid again asks you, “please, help me to write my essay!” there’s no nothing to worry about.

If you’ve ever asked yourself the question, “how can my child learn how to write an essay?” Now you’ve got numerous working tips that can help you and your child genuinely enjoy writing essays.

After learning the basics of writing essays, your kid will approach the assignment without a shadow of a writing block or discomfort. And becoming a creative writer will not take long – when a kid is surrounded by support, exciting topics, and interesting practice options, one is definitely about to succeed!

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How Does Writing Fit Into the ‘Science of Reading’?

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In one sense, the national conversation about what it will take to make sure all children become strong readers has been wildly successful: States are passing legislation supporting evidence-based teaching approaches , and school districts are rushing to supply training. Publishers are under pressure to drop older materials . And for the first time in years, an instructional issue—reading—is headlining education media coverage.

In the middle of all that, though, the focus on the “science of reading” has elided its twin component in literacy instruction: writing.

Writing is intrinsically important for all students to learn—after all, it is the primary way beyond speech that humans communicate. But more than that, research suggests that teaching students to write in an integrated fashion with reading is not only efficient, it’s effective.

Yet writing is often underplayed in the elementary grades. Too often, it is separated from schools’ reading block. Writing is not assessed as frequently as reading, and principals, worried about reading-exam scores, direct teachers to focus on one often at the expense of the other. Finally, beyond the English/language arts block, kids often aren’t asked to do much writing in early grades.

“Sometimes, in an early-literacy classroom, you’ll hear a teacher say, ‘It’s time to pick up your pencils,’” said Wiley Blevins, an author and literacy consultant who provides training in schools. “But your pencils should be in your hand almost the entire morning.”

Strikingly, many of the critiques that reading researchers have made against the “balanced literacy” approach that has held sway in schools for decades could equally apply to writing instruction: Foundational writing skills—like phonics and language structure—have not generally been taught systematically or explicitly.

And like the “find the main idea” strategies commonly taught in reading comprehension, writing instruction has tended to focus on content-neutral tasks, rather than deepening students’ connections to the content they learn.

Education Week wants to bring more attention to these connections in the stories that make up this special collection . But first, we want to delve deeper into the case for including writing in every step of the elementary curriculum.

Why has writing been missing from the reading conversation?

Much like the body of knowledge on how children learn to read words, it is also settled science that reading and writing draw on shared knowledge, even though they have traditionally been segmented in instruction.

“The body of research is substantial in both number of studies and quality of studies. There’s no question that reading and writing share a lot of real estate, they depend on a lot of the same knowledge and skills,” said Timothy Shanahan, an emeritus professor of education at the University of Illinois Chicago. “Pick your spot: text structure, vocabulary, sound-symbol relationships, ‘world knowledge.’”

The reasons for the bifurcation in reading and writing are legion. One is that the two fields have typically been studied separately. (Researchers studying writing usually didn’t examine whether a writing intervention, for instance, also aided students’ reading abilities—and vice versa.)

Some scholars also finger the dominance of the federally commissioned National Reading Panel report, which in 2000 outlined key instructional components of learning to read. The review didn’t examine the connection of writing to reading.

Looking even further back yields insights, too. Penmanship and spelling were historically the only parts of writing that were taught, and when writing reappeared in the latter half of the 20th century, it tended to focus on “process writing,” emphasizing personal experience and story generation over other genres. Only when the Common Core State Standards appeared in 2010 did the emphasis shift to writing about nonfiction texts and across subjects—the idea that students should be writing about what they’ve learned.

And finally, teaching writing is hard. Few studies document what preparation teachers receive to teach writing, but in surveys, many teachers say they received little training in their college education courses. That’s probably why only a little over half of teachers, in one 2016 survey, said that they enjoyed teaching writing.

Writing should begin in the early grades

These factors all work against what is probably the most important conclusion from the research over the last few decades: Students in the early-elementary grades need lots of varied opportunities to write.

“Students need support in their writing,” said Dana Robertson, an associate professor of reading and literacy education at the school of education at Virginia Tech who also studies how instructional change takes root in schools. “They need to be taught explicitly the skills and strategies of writing and they need to see the connections of reading, writing, and knowledge development.”

While research supports some fundamental tenets of writing instruction—that it should be structured, for instance, and involve drafting and revising—it hasn’t yet pointed to a specific teaching recipe that works best.

One of the challenges, the researchers note, is that while reading curricula have improved over the years, they still don’t typically provide many supports for students—or teachers, for that matter—for writing. Teachers often have to supplement with additions that don’t always mesh well with their core, grade-level content instruction.

“We have a lot of activities in writing we know are good,” Shanahan said. “We don’t really have a yearlong elementary-school-level curriculum in writing. That just doesn’t exist the way it does in reading.”

Nevertheless, practitioners like Blevins work writing into every reading lesson, even in the earliest grades. And all the components that make up a solid reading program can be enhanced through writing activities.

4 Key Things to Know About How Reading and Writing Interlock

Want a quick summary of what research tells us about the instructional connections between reading and writing?

1. Reading and writing are intimately connected.

Research on the connections began in the early 1980s and has grown more robust with time.

Among the newest and most important additions are three research syntheses conducted by Steve Graham, a professor at the University of Arizona, and his research partners. One of them examined whether writing instruction also led to improvements in students’ reading ability; a second examined the inverse question. Both found significant positive effects for reading and writing.

A third meta-analysis gets one step closer to classroom instruction. Graham and partners examined 47 studies of instructional programs that balanced both reading and writing—no program could feature more than 60 percent of one or the other. The results showed generally positive effects on both reading and writing measures.

2. Writing matters even at the earliest grades, when students are learning to read.

Studies show that the prewriting students do in early education carries meaningful signals about their decoding, spelling, and reading comprehension later on. Reading experts say that students should be supported in writing almost as soon as they begin reading, and evidence suggests that both spelling and handwriting are connected to the ability to connect speech to print and to oral language development.

3. Like reading, writing must be taught explicitly.

Writing is a complex task that demands much of students’ cognitive resources. Researchers generally agree that writing must be explicitly taught—rather than left up to students to “figure out” the rules on their own.

There isn’t as much research about how precisely to do this. One 2019 review, in fact, found significant overlap among the dozen writing programs studied, and concluded that all showed signs of boosting learning. Debates abound about the amount of structure students need and in what sequence, such as whether they need to master sentence construction before moving onto paragraphs and lengthier texts.

But in general, students should be guided on how to construct sentences and paragraphs, and they should have access to models and exemplars, the research suggests. They also need to understand the iterative nature of writing, including how to draft and revise.

A number of different writing frameworks incorporating various degrees of structure and modeling are available, though most of them have not been studied empirically.

4. Writing can help students learn content—and make sense of it.

Much of reading comprehension depends on helping students absorb “world knowledge”—think arts, ancient cultures, literature, and science—so that they can make sense of increasingly sophisticated texts and ideas as their reading improves. Writing can enhance students’ content learning, too, and should be emphasized rather than taking a back seat to the more commonly taught stories and personal reflections.

Graham and colleagues conducted another meta-analysis of nearly 60 studies looking at this idea of “writing to learn” in mathematics, science, and social studies. The studies included a mix of higher-order assignments, like analyses and argumentative writing, and lower-level ones, like summarizing and explaining. The study found that across all three disciplines, writing about the content improved student learning.

If students are doing work on phonemic awareness—the ability to recognize sounds—they shouldn’t merely manipulate sounds orally; they can put them on the page using letters. If students are learning how to decode, they can also encode—record written letters and words while they say the sounds out loud.

And students can write as they begin learning about language structure. When Blevins’ students are mainly working with decodable texts with controlled vocabularies, writing can support their knowledge about how texts and narratives work: how sentences are put together and how they can be pulled apart and reconstructed. Teachers can prompt them in these tasks, asking them to rephrase a sentence as a question, split up two sentences, or combine them.

“Young kids are writing these mile-long sentences that become second nature. We set a higher bar, and they are fully capable of doing it. We can demystify a bit some of that complex text if we develop early on how to talk about sentences—how they’re created, how they’re joined,” Blevins said. “There are all these things you can do that are helpful to develop an understanding of how sentences work and to get lots of practice.”

As students progress through the elementary grades, this structured work grows more sophisticated. They need to be taught both sentence and paragraph structure , and they need to learn how different writing purposes and genres—narrative, persuasive, analytical—demand different approaches. Most of all, the research indicates, students need opportunities to write at length often.

Using writing to support students’ exploration of content

Reading is far more than foundational skills, of course. It means introducing students to rich content and the specialized vocabulary in each discipline and then ensuring that they read, discuss, analyze, and write about those ideas. The work to systematically build students’ knowledge begins in the early grades and progresses throughout their K-12 experience.

Here again, available evidence suggests that writing can be a useful tool to help students explore, deepen, and draw connections in this content. With the proper supports, writing can be a method for students to retell and analyze what they’ve learned in discussions of content and literature throughout the school day —in addition to their creative writing.

This “writing to learn” approach need not wait for students to master foundational skills. In the K-2 grades especially, much content is learned through teacher read-alouds and conversation that include more complex vocabulary and ideas than the texts students are capable of reading. But that should not preclude students from writing about this content, experts say.

“We do a read-aloud or a media piece and we write about what we learned. It’s just a part of how you’re responding, or sharing, what you’ve learned across texts; it’s not a separate thing from reading,” Blevins said. “If I am doing read-alouds on a concept—on animal habitats, for example—my decodable texts will be on animals. And students are able to include some of these more sophisticated ideas and language in their writing, because we’ve elevated the conversations around these texts.”

In this set of stories , Education Week examines the connections between elementary-level reading and writing in three areas— encoding , language and text structure , and content-area learning . But there are so many more examples.

Please write us to share yours when you’ve finished.

Want to read more about the research that informed this story? Here’s a bibliography to start you off.

Berninger V. W., Abbott, R. D., Abbott, S. P., Graham S., & Richards T. (2002). Writing and reading: Connections between language by hand and language by eye. J ournal of Learning Disabilities. Special Issue: The Language of Written Language, 35(1), 39–56 Berninger, Virginia, Robert D. Abbott, Janine Jones, Beverly J. Wolf, Laura Gould, Marci Anderson-Younstrom, Shirley Shimada, Kenn Apel. (2006) “Early development of language by hand: composing, reading, listening, and speaking connections; three letter-writing modes; and fast mapping in spelling.” Developmental Neuropsychology, 29(1), pp. 61-92 Cabell, Sonia Q, Laura S. Tortorelli, and Hope K. Gerde (2013). “How Do I Write…? Scaffolding Preschoolers’ Early Writing Skills.” The Reading Teacher, 66(8), pp. 650-659. Gerde, H.K., Bingham, G.E. & Wasik, B.A. (2012). “Writing in Early Childhood Classrooms: Guidance for Best Practices.” Early Childhood Education Journal 40, 351–359 (2012) Gilbert, Jennifer, and Steve Graham. (2010). “Teaching Writing to Elementary Students in Grades 4–6: A National Survey.” The Elementary School Journal 110(44) Graham, Steve, et al. (2017). “Effectiveness of Literacy Programs Balancing Reading and Writing Instruction: A Meta-Analysis.” Reading Research Quarterly, 53(3) pp. 279–304 Graham, Steve, and Michael Hebert. (2011). “Writing to Read: A Meta-Analysis of the Impact of Writing and Writing Instruction on Reading.” Harvard Educational Review (2011) 81(4): 710–744. Graham, Steve. (2020). “The Sciences of Reading and Writing Must Become More Fully Integrated.” Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1) pp. S35–S44 Graham, Steve, Sharlene A. Kiuhara, and Meade MacKay. (2020).”The Effects of Writing on Learning in Science, Social Studies, and Mathematics: A Meta-Analysis.” Review of Educational Research April 2020, Vol 90, No. 2, pp. 179–226 Shanahan, Timothy. “History of Writing and Reading Connections.” in Shanahan, Timothy. (2016). “Relationships between reading and writing development.” In C. MacArthur, S. Graham, & J. Fitzgerald (Eds.), Handbook of writing research (2nd ed., pp. 194–207). New York, NY: Guilford. Slavin, Robert, Lake, C., Inns, A., Baye, A., Dachet, D., & Haslam, J. (2019). “A quantitative synthesis of research on writing approaches in grades 2 to 12.” London: Education Endowment Foundation. Troia, Gary. (2014). Evidence-based practices for writing instruction (Document No. IC-5). Retrieved from University of Florida, Collaboration for Effective Educator, Development, Accountability, and Reform Center website: http://ceedar.education.ufl.edu/tools/innovation-configuration/ Troia, Gary, and Steve Graham. (2016).“Common Core Writing and Language Standards and Aligned State Assessments: A National Survey of Teacher Beliefs and Attitudes.” Reading and Writing 29(9).

A version of this article appeared in the January 25, 2023 edition of Education Week as How Does Writing Fit Into the ‘Science of Reading’?

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The One Method That Changes Your—and All Students’—Writing

Science-based writing methods can achieve dramatic results..

Posted May 14, 2024 | Reviewed by Abigail Fagan

• Why Education Is Important
• Find a Child Therapist
• A systematic writing framework offers a method for dramatically improving the teaching of writing.
• This method received only limited uptake, despite high-profile research publications and textbooks.
• A focus on writing style might have limited the method's impacts.

I remember spending hours commenting painstakingly on my students’ papers when I was a graduate student teaching in the Expository Writing Program at New York University. My students loved our classes, and they filled my sections and gave me terrific course evaluations. Yet I could see that their writing failed to change significantly over the course of the semester. I ended up feeling as if I should refund their money, haunted by the blunt instruments we had to teach writing.

As I’ve learned from directing five writing programs at three different universities, methods matter. When I reviewed comments on papers from instructors who taught in my programs, I discovered that the quantity and quality of comments on students’ papers made only a slight impact on writing outcomes. For instance, one notoriously lazy instructor took several weeks to return assignments and only used spelling and grammar checkers to automate comments. But his conscientious colleague made dozens of sharp observations about students’ arguments, paragraphs, and sentences. However, Mr. Conscientious’ students improved perhaps only 10% over Mr. Minimalist’s students. Even then, the differences stemmed from basic guidelines Mr. Conscientious insisted his students write to, which included providing context sentences at the outset of their essay introductions.

Educators have also poured resources into teaching writing, with increasing numbers of hours dedicated to teaching writing across primary, secondary, and higher education . Yet studies continue to find writing skills inadequate . In higher education, most universities require at least a year of writing-intensive courses, with many universities also requiring writing across the curriculum or writing in the disciplines to help preserve students’ writing skills. However, writing outcomes have remained mostly unchanged .

While pursuing my doctorate, I dedicated my research to figuring out how writing worked. As a graduate student also teaching part-time, I was an early convert to process writing. I also taught those ancient principles of logos, ethos, and pathos, as well as grammar and punctuation. Nevertheless, these frameworks only created a canvas for students’ writing. What was missing: how writers should handle words, sentence structure, and relationships between sentences.

Yet researchers published the beginnings of a science-based writing method over 30 years ago. George Gopen, Gregory Colomb, and Joseph Williams created a framework for identifying how to maximize the clarity, coherence, and continuity of writing. In particular, Gopen and Swan (1990) created a methodology for making scientific writing readable . This work should have been a revelation to anyone teaching in or directing a writing program. But, weirdly, comparatively few writing programs or faculty embraced this work, despite Williams, Colomb, and Gopen publishing both research and textbooks outlining the method and process.

Peculiarly, this framework—represented by Williams’ Style series of textbooks and Gopen’s reader expectation approach—failed to become standard in writing courses, likely because of two limitations. First, both Gopen and Williams hewed to a relativistic stance on writing methods, noting that rule-flouting often creates a memorable style. This stance created a raft of often-contradictory principles for writing. For example, Williams demonstrated that beginning sentences with There is or There are openings hijacked the clarity of sentences, then argued writers should use There is or There are to shunt important content into sentence emphasis positions, where readers recall content best. Second, these researchers failed to tie this writing framework to the wealth of data in psycholinguistics, cognitive neuroscience , or cognitive psychology on how our reading brains process written English. For instance, textbooks written by these three principal researchers avoid any mention of why emphasis positions exist at the ends of sentences and paragraphs—despite the concept clearly originating in the recency effect. This limitation may stem from the humanities’ long-held antipathy to the idea that writing is a product, rather than a process. Or even that science-based methods can help teachers and programs measure the effectiveness of writing, one reason why university First-Year Writing programs have failed to improve students’ writing in any measurable way.

Nevertheless, when you teach students how our reading brains work, you create a powerful method for rapidly improving their writing—in any course that requires writing and at all levels of education. Students can grasp how writing works as a system and assess the costs and benefits of decisions writers face, even as they choose their first words. This method also works powerfully to help students immediately understand how, for instance, paragraph heads leverage priming effects to shape readers’ understanding of paragraph content.

Using this method, I and my colleagues have helped students use a single writing assignment to secure hundreds of jobs, win millions in grant funding, and advance through the ranks in academia. However, we’ve also used the same method without modifications in elementary and secondary classrooms to bolster students’ writing by as much as three grade levels in a single year.

Perhaps the time has arrived for this well-kept secret to revolutionizing student writing outcomes to begin making inroads into more writing classrooms.

Gopen, G. D. and J. A. Swan (1990). "The Science of Scientific Writing." American Scientist 78(6): 550-558.

Gopen, George. The Sense of Structure: Writing from the Reader’s Perspective . Pearson, 2004.

Gopen, George. Expectations: Teaching Writing from the Reader’s Perspective . Pearson, 2004.

Williams, Joseph. Style: Toward Clarity and Grace . University of Chicago Press, 1995.

Williams, Joseph. Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace . Harper Collins, 1994.

Williams, Joseph. Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace . Longman, 2002.

Jane Yellowlees Douglas, Ph.D. , is a consultant on writing and organizations. She is also the author, with Maria B. Grant, MD, of The Biomedical Writer: What You Need to Succeed in Academic Medicine .

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Our research shows children produce better pieces of writing by hand. But they need keyboard skills too

Senior Lecturer, Edith Cowan University

Associate Professor in Early Childhood Education and Community, University of Canberra

Professor Susan Ledger, Head of School - Dean of Education, University of Newcastle, NSW., University of Newcastle

Disclosure statement

Anabela Malpique receives funding from The Ian Potter Foundation

Deborah Pino Pasternak receives funding from The Ian Potter Foundation, and the ACT Education Directorate via the Affiliated Schools Funded Research Projects.

Susan Ledger received funding from Ian Potter Foundation.

Edith Cowan University , University of Newcastle , and University of Canberra provide funding as members of The Conversation AU.

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Children today are growing up surrounded by technology. So it’s easy to assume they will be able to write effectively using a keyboard.

But our research suggests this is not necessarily true.

We need to actively teach students to be able to type as well as write using paper and pen or pencil.

Our research

Our research team has published two recent studies investigating children’s handwriting and typing.

In a study published last month we looked at Year 2 students and their handwriting and keyboard writing. This study involved 544 students from 17 primary schools in Perth, Western Australia.

We assessed how easily students wrote stories using paper and pencil compared to writing stories using a laptop. We found they produced longer and higher-quality handwritten texts. This was based on ten criteria, including ideas, vocabulary, spelling and punctuation.

These findings echoed our December 2023 study where we did a meta-analysis of studies published between 2000–2022. These compared the effects of writing by hand or keyboard on primary students’ writing.

We looked at 22 international studies involving 6,168 participants from across different countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and other non-native English-speaking countries, such as Germany and Portugal.

Our analysis showed primary students produce higher quality texts using paper and pen or pencil than when using a keyboard.

Why are kids stronger in handwriting?

In Australia – as in many other countries – children are taught to write by hand first. Keyboard writing is only added as an extra skill once handwriting has been mastered .

We know it is very important to continue to teach children to write by hand, despite so many advances in technology.

Studies show teaching handwriting in the first years of schooling is connected to improved spelling and greater capacity to write well and quickly in primary and later years of schooling.

Other studies show using handwriting to create texts (such as notes) promotes our capacity to learn and memorise information.

But they also need to learn how to use keyboards

We know it is also important for students be able to write quickly and accurately using a keyboard.

They will need to use keyboards to write for study, work and life as they get older. This process needs to become automatic so they can concentrate on the content of what they are writing.

Our research has consistently shown young people who can spell and write quickly and accurately are able to produce longer and higher quality pieces of writing. Other studies have shown when children face difficulties in handwriting or typing, they may often avoid writing altogether and develop a negative mindset toward writing.

Learning to type is complex

As our research suggests, students also need to be taught how to use a keyboard. Much like handwriting, it requires a complex set of cognitive, visual and motor processes, requiring frequent practice and instruction.

It involves learning the location of the keys on a keyboard, combined with spatial skills of positioning, and moving fingers to press the keys in the correct sequence. Students need time to practise so they can move beyond the “ hunt and peck ” motion (where you have to hunt visually for each key).

Research also suggests teaching about keyboards is more effective when spread out over several years.

First, children need to understand letter locations on the keyboard and the position of their hands, which can be developed via online practice exercises monitored by teachers. Accuracy and speed should not be emphasised until students have mastered where letters are.

Which comes first?

While students ultimately need to be able to write both on paper and using digital devices, there are unanswered questions about the order in which handwriting and typing should be taught or whether they should be taught together.

We also don’t yet know if it matters whether students are learning to write via keyboards, touch typing on tablets or by using stylus pens (devices that look like pencils and write via screens).

More research is needed to support teachers, students and families.

How to help your child

Despite these unknowns, there are many things we can do to help students learn how to write on paper and using a keyboard. These include:

dedicating time for practice : teachers can build regular times in class to write and send home small tasks (such as writing a shopping list, finishing a story or describing a monster)

joining in : instead of “policing” your child’s writing, show them what you write in your everyday life. As you write, you can talk about what you will write (planning) and you can share ideas about how you can make your writing clearer or more exciting.

talk about your mistakes and find ways of correcting your writing : when adults talk about their errors or doubts, they make them a natural part of the process.

ask children to read what they have written : this provides opportunities for correction and celebration. Praise children’s bold attempts such as using new words or experimenting with expressions.

give children choice : this gives children some control. For example, they can choose a topic, they can mix art and letters or they can choose paper or keyboard.

display their writing : make children’s writing visible on your walls or fridge or as wallpapers on your devices to instil a sense a pride in what they have done.

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Why writing by hand beats typing for thinking and learning

Jonathan Lambert

If you're like many digitally savvy Americans, it has likely been a while since you've spent much time writing by hand.

The laborious process of tracing out our thoughts, letter by letter, on the page is becoming a relic of the past in our screen-dominated world, where text messages and thumb-typed grocery lists have replaced handwritten letters and sticky notes. Electronic keyboards offer obvious efficiency benefits that have undoubtedly boosted our productivity — imagine having to write all your emails longhand.

To keep up, many schools are introducing computers as early as preschool, meaning some kids may learn the basics of typing before writing by hand.

But giving up this slower, more tactile way of expressing ourselves may come at a significant cost, according to a growing body of research that's uncovering the surprising cognitive benefits of taking pen to paper, or even stylus to iPad — for both children and adults.

Is this some kind of joke? A school facing shortages starts teaching standup comedy

In kids, studies show that tracing out ABCs, as opposed to typing them, leads to better and longer-lasting recognition and understanding of letters. Writing by hand also improves memory and recall of words, laying down the foundations of literacy and learning. In adults, taking notes by hand during a lecture, instead of typing, can lead to better conceptual understanding of material.

"There's actually some very important things going on during the embodied experience of writing by hand," says Ramesh Balasubramaniam , a neuroscientist at the University of California, Merced. "It has important cognitive benefits."

While those benefits have long been recognized by some (for instance, many authors, including Jennifer Egan and Neil Gaiman , draft their stories by hand to stoke creativity), scientists have only recently started investigating why writing by hand has these effects.

A slew of recent brain imaging research suggests handwriting's power stems from the relative complexity of the process and how it forces different brain systems to work together to reproduce the shapes of letters in our heads onto the page.

Your brain on handwriting

Both handwriting and typing involve moving our hands and fingers to create words on a page. But handwriting, it turns out, requires a lot more fine-tuned coordination between the motor and visual systems. This seems to more deeply engage the brain in ways that support learning.

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Feeling artsy here's how making art helps your brain.

"Handwriting is probably among the most complex motor skills that the brain is capable of," says Marieke Longcamp , a cognitive neuroscientist at Aix-Marseille Université.

Gripping a pen nimbly enough to write is a complicated task, as it requires your brain to continuously monitor the pressure that each finger exerts on the pen. Then, your motor system has to delicately modify that pressure to re-create each letter of the words in your head on the page.

"Your fingers have to each do something different to produce a recognizable letter," says Sophia Vinci-Booher , an educational neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University. Adding to the complexity, your visual system must continuously process that letter as it's formed. With each stroke, your brain compares the unfolding script with mental models of the letters and words, making adjustments to fingers in real time to create the letters' shapes, says Vinci-Booher.

That's not true for typing.

To type "tap" your fingers don't have to trace out the form of the letters — they just make three relatively simple and uniform movements. In comparison, it takes a lot more brainpower, as well as cross-talk between brain areas, to write than type.

Recent brain imaging studies bolster this idea. A study published in January found that when students write by hand, brain areas involved in motor and visual information processing " sync up " with areas crucial to memory formation, firing at frequencies associated with learning.

"We don't see that [synchronized activity] in typewriting at all," says Audrey van der Meer , a psychologist and study co-author at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. She suggests that writing by hand is a neurobiologically richer process and that this richness may confer some cognitive benefits.

Other experts agree. "There seems to be something fundamental about engaging your body to produce these shapes," says Robert Wiley , a cognitive psychologist at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. "It lets you make associations between your body and what you're seeing and hearing," he says, which might give the mind more footholds for accessing a given concept or idea.

Those extra footholds are especially important for learning in kids, but they may give adults a leg up too. Wiley and others worry that ditching handwriting for typing could have serious consequences for how we all learn and think.

What might be lost as handwriting wanes

The clearest consequence of screens and keyboards replacing pen and paper might be on kids' ability to learn the building blocks of literacy — letters.

"Letter recognition in early childhood is actually one of the best predictors of later reading and math attainment," says Vinci-Booher. Her work suggests the process of learning to write letters by hand is crucial for learning to read them.

"When kids write letters, they're just messy," she says. As kids practice writing "A," each iteration is different, and that variability helps solidify their conceptual understanding of the letter.

Research suggests kids learn to recognize letters better when seeing variable handwritten examples, compared with uniform typed examples.

This helps develop areas of the brain used during reading in older children and adults, Vinci-Booher found.

"This could be one of the ways that early experiences actually translate to long-term life outcomes," she says. "These visually demanding, fine motor actions bake in neural communication patterns that are really important for learning later on."

Ditching handwriting instruction could mean that those skills don't get developed as well, which could impair kids' ability to learn down the road.

"If young children are not receiving any handwriting training, which is very good brain stimulation, then their brains simply won't reach their full potential," says van der Meer. "It's scary to think of the potential consequences."

Many states are trying to avoid these risks by mandating cursive instruction. This year, California started requiring elementary school students to learn cursive , and similar bills are moving through state legislatures in several states, including Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina and Wisconsin. (So far, evidence suggests that it's the writing by hand that matters, not whether it's print or cursive.)

Slowing down and processing information

For adults, one of the main benefits of writing by hand is that it simply forces us to slow down.

During a meeting or lecture, it's possible to type what you're hearing verbatim. But often, "you're not actually processing that information — you're just typing in the blind," says van der Meer. "If you take notes by hand, you can't write everything down," she says.

The relative slowness of the medium forces you to process the information, writing key words or phrases and using drawing or arrows to work through ideas, she says. "You make the information your own," she says, which helps it stick in the brain.

Such connections and integration are still possible when typing, but they need to be made more intentionally. And sometimes, efficiency wins out. "When you're writing a long essay, it's obviously much more practical to use a keyboard," says van der Meer.

Still, given our long history of using our hands to mark meaning in the world, some scientists worry about the more diffuse consequences of offloading our thinking to computers.

"We're foisting a lot of our knowledge, extending our cognition, to other devices, so it's only natural that we've started using these other agents to do our writing for us," says Balasubramaniam.

It's possible that this might free up our minds to do other kinds of hard thinking, he says. Or we might be sacrificing a fundamental process that's crucial for the kinds of immersive cognitive experiences that enable us to learn and think at our full potential.

Balasubramaniam stresses, however, that we don't have to ditch digital tools to harness the power of handwriting. So far, research suggests that scribbling with a stylus on a screen activates the same brain pathways as etching ink on paper. It's the movement that counts, he says, not its final form.

Jonathan Lambert is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance journalist who covers science, health and policy.

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Our research shows children produce better pieces of writing by hand. But they need keyboard skills too

by Anabela Malpique, Deborah Pino Pasternak and Susan Ledger, The Conversation

Children today are growing up surrounded by technology. So it's easy to assume they will be able to write effectively using a keyboard.

But our research suggests this is not necessarily true.

We need to actively teach students to be able to type as well as write using paper and pen or pencil.

Our research

Our research team has published two recent studies investigating children's handwriting and typing.

In a study published last month we looked at Year 2 students and their handwriting and keyboard writing. This study involved 544 students from 17 primary schools in Perth, Western Australia.

We assessed how easily students wrote stories using paper and pencil compared to writing stories using a laptop. We found they produced longer and higher-quality handwritten texts. This was based on ten criteria, including ideas, vocabulary, spelling and punctuation.

These findings echoed our December 2023 study where we did a meta-analysis of studies published between 2000–2022. These compared the effects of writing by hand or keyboard on primary students' writing.

We looked at 22 international studies involving 6,168 participants from across different countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and other non-native English-speaking countries, such as Germany and Portugal.

Our analysis showed primary students produce higher quality texts using paper and pen or pencil than when using a keyboard.

Why are kids stronger in handwriting?

In Australia—as in many other countries—children are taught to write by hand first. Keyboard writing is only added as an extra skill once handwriting has been mastered .

We know it is very important to continue to teach children to write by hand, despite so many advances in technology.

Studies show teaching handwriting in the first years of schooling is connected to improved spelling and greater capacity to write well and quickly in primary and later years of schooling.

Other studies show using handwriting to create texts (such as notes) promotes our capacity to learn and memorize information.

But they also need to learn how to use keyboards

We know it is also important for students be able to write quickly and accurately using a keyboard.

They will need to use keyboards to write for study, work and life as they get older. This process needs to become automatic so they can concentrate on the content of what they are writing.

Our research has consistently shown young people who can spell and write quickly and accurately are able to produce longer and higher quality pieces of writing. Other studies have shown when children face difficulties in handwriting or typing, they may often avoid writing altogether and develop a negative mindset toward writing.

Learning to type is complex

As our research suggests, students also need to be taught how to use a keyboard. Much like handwriting, it requires a complex set of cognitive, visual and motor processes, requiring frequent practice and instruction.

It involves learning the location of the keys on a keyboard, combined with spatial skills of positioning, and moving fingers to press the keys in the correct sequence. Students need time to practice so they can move beyond the " hunt and peck " motion (where you have to hunt visually for each key).

Research also suggests teaching about keyboards is more effective when spread out over several years.

First, children need to understand letter locations on the keyboard and the position of their hands, which can be developed via online practice exercises monitored by teachers. Accuracy and speed should not be emphasized until students have mastered where letters are.

Which comes first?

While students ultimately need to be able to write both on paper and using digital devices , there are unanswered questions about the order in which handwriting and typing should be taught or whether they should be taught together.

We also don't yet know if it matters whether students are learning to write via keyboards, touch typing on tablets or by using stylus pens (devices that look like pencils and write via screens).

More research is needed to support teachers, students and families.

How to help your child

Despite these unknowns, there are many things we can do to help students learn how to write on paper and using a keyboard. These include:

dedicating time for practice : teachers can build regular times in class to write and send home small tasks (such as writing a shopping list, finishing a story or describing a monster)

joining in : instead of "policing" your child's writing, show them what you write in your everyday life. As you write, you can talk about what you will write (planning) and you can share ideas about how you can make your writing clearer or more exciting.

talk about your mistakes and find ways of correcting your writing : when adults talk about their errors or doubts, they make them a natural part of the process.

ask children to read what they have written : this provides opportunities for correction and celebration. Praise children's bold attempts such as using new words or experimenting with expressions.

give children choice : this gives children some control. For example, they can choose a topic, they can mix art and letters or they can choose paper or keyboard.

display their writing : make children's writing visible on your walls or fridge or as wallpapers on your devices to instill a sense a pride in what they have done.

Provided by The Conversation

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