How to Help Your Child’s Writing:

1. How to Help Your Child’s Writing: Without doing it for them For Kinders Deborah Hofreiter, Ms. TOSA Writing and literacy K-12 Vice Principal Mira Costa High School

2. Survey of Writing When was writing a favorite activity for you? What made it so much fun? When was writing a horrendous experience for you? What made it so horrible?

4. Motivation is key Ish by Peter H. Reynolds

5. What is the Philosophy of Writers Workshop? Independence Choice Writing is a Process: Teach the writer not the writing Authentic Instruction: Don’t teach something that you wouldn’t actually DO as a writer

6. Brian Cambourne’sConditions for Learning

7. Think of a time when you had to learn something difficult, such as: • Cooking a new recipe • Doing your income taxes • Working on a car • Playing a card game • Riding a bicycle • Learning a new computer program

8. What process did you use to help you learn?

9. Learners need to be immersed in writing of all kinds. Immersion

10. Learners need to receive many demonstrations of how writing is constructed and used. Demonstration

11. “We achieve what we expect to achieve: we fail if we expect to fail. We are more likely to engage with demonstrations of those whom we regard as significant and who hold high expectations for us.” Expectation

12. Learners must receive “feedback” from exchanges with more knowledgeable “others.” Response must be relevant, appropriate, timely, readily available, non-threatening, with no strings attached. Response

13. Learners must be free to approximate the desired model —“mistakes are essential for learning to occur.” Approximation

14. Learners need time and opportunity to use, employ, and practice their developing control in functional, realistic, non-artificial ways. Use

15. Learners need to make their own decisions about when, how, and what “bits” to learn in any learning task. Learners who lose the ability to make decisions are “depowered.” Responsibility

16. Engagement occurs when: The learner is convinced that he or she is a potential “doer” or “performer” of the demonstrations. The learner believes that engagement with these demonstrations will further the purposes of his or her life. The learner can engage and try to emulate without fear of physical or psychological hurt if the attempt is not fully “correct.”

17. Engagement is a compelling concept, especially when trying to explain learning failure. It suggests the clutch mechanism of a car engaging the motor; the clutch connects the engine’s power to the drive shaft, and this sets the car in motion. If the clutch does not engage properly, all that results is useless revving of the motor; the car does not move.from Cambourne’s,“Conditions for Literacy Learning”

18. Unless learners engage with the demonstrations provided by the persons or artifacts available to them, it is highly improbable that such demonstrations will set learning in motion.from Cambourne’s,“Conditions for Literacy Learning”

20. Using Mentor Texts Roller Coaster by Marla Frazee

21. Developing Better Writers Supporting your child in writing

22. De-motivation for writing Which of these do your children think when you ask them to do some writing? Yahoo! It’s hard I hate writing stories I don’t understand what I have to do Does it have to be true? I can’t think what to write I’ve got an idea but I can’t think of a good ending I can’t write quickly enough I’ll do it quickly so I get to on to something less boring Can I do a picture? Will I have time to finish This is a big bit of paper – do I have to fill it all? Is spelling important I can’t think what to call the characters Will I be able to use the computer? Who’s going to read this

23. The Mechanics • Writing begins with mark making • Recognizing and writing letters of the alphabet (the graphemes) • Listening for sounds (phonemes): - • Initial • End • Middle When children can hear all 3 they begin to write CVC Words – e.g cat • Learning the blends e.g. bl as a beginning blend & nd as an end blend • Learning the vowel phonemes & alternative graphemes e.g. ai, eaigh, ow, ue • All of these skills are closely related to spelling & reading

24. Over to you! Sound buttons – help to count the number of phonemes in a word Cat cat mouse mouse Goat goat cheering cheer i n g

25. Phonic Vocabulary It is important to use the appropriate language when working with your child Grapheme – visual representation of a sound Phoneme – a sound that can be made up of 1 or more letters Blend – two letters that can be blended e.g. cl, gr ( you can still hear both sounds) Digraph /vowel digraph – two or more letters that when joined together make a completely different sound e.g. ch, sh, th & ea, oa, igh, ough – not phonetically decodable

26. Be resilient and have a go! You can work with a partner meat chief sound mountain flower

27. How you can help? Practice reciting the alphabet – practice actions & recognising phonemes Practice writing the graphemes – correct formation Read and say lots of rhymes together Practice targets that are discussed and sent home following parent interviews (these will be more specific to your child’s level of ability) Provide lots of encouragement Provide lots of opportunities for your child to engage in any writing activity

28. Type of activities • Play sound games • Look for graphemes in words • Listen for phonemes in words • Provide different writing genres: - • Shopping lists • Greetings cards • Letters • Stories • Books • Poetry • Encourage your child to use descriptive language when you are out and about. • Give them two short sentences and ask if they can find an interesting connective to join the two pieces of information.

29. Planning to motivate writing Plan for thinking time Plan for talking time Plan to allow time for children to interact with topic through drama/role play Plan to make it enjoyable To become successful writers children need to see writing as a special treat.

30. Mother’s Day card