|
|
 |
Supporting Writing Conventions at Home
From their earliest emergence as pre-academic skills, writing conventions and phonetic reading are inseparably entwined. Following word paths from left to right and from top to bottom on a page, letter recognition and sight/sound associations, decoding and sight word recognition, as well as vocabulary and concept development guide both the beginning reader and the novice writer. As skills progress, the strategies used for correct grammar, punctuation, decoding, capitalization, sentence structure and paragraphing evolve in a parallel manner.
As infants listen to the cooings of mothers, as toddlers become engrossed in the fascination of their favorite fairy tales, and as preschool children write their first “Thank You” notes, internal language emerges that includes learned patterns of pauses, sentence structure, fluency, thinking, and predicting. This language, in turn, becomes the foundation for an internal filter that directs the intuitive nature of the way we speak, read, and write. Readers expect writing to conform to their expectations and to match the conventions generally established for text (The National Council of Teachers of English, 2004). As we read, we expect words to be spelled a certain way, punctuation to be used in a predictable manner, and word usage and syntax to match prior experiences.
Children who have been read to frequently or read a lot themselves, have a much easier time writing. For a child to be able to write a particular kind of text, it helps if he or she has heard or experienced that genre and is able to draw upon that knowledge (NCTE, 2004). An effective tool for developing writing at the primary level is for parents to have their child read aloud or describe what she or he has drawn or written. As children become more skilled in writing, one idea to ease the stress over proper punctuation is to have an adult read the child’s work aloud, and then encourage the child to revise based on whether the text “sounds” like it should based on prior experiences. As children are exposed to more styles of writing, with a variety of patterns and structures, their ability to generate, organize, revise, and edit writing will blossom as well.
visit other parent writing resources:
- Parent Resources by Grade Level
-
- Articles that Support Parental Involvement
-
|
 |
