So far I have discussed how children can experience anxiety when studying and working on tasks in Mathematics however today we are going to look at children who are reluctant writers.
I’m going to briefly discuss some observations I have about this issue and then quickly move onto a few suggestions for getting children to be more involved and keener when they are writing.
A lot of children suffer from cognitive overload when they are writing and this is why it can be seen an arduous task, one they do not want to undertake. Much is often made about how children can’t write properly and how grammar standards are not what they used to be but in actual fact the expectations for grammar and writing are high. Could you write a persuasive text that includes modal verbs, the subjunctive form, rhetorical questions and relative clauses? Or a Science Fiction story with expended noun phrases, metaphors, abstract nouns and complex sentences?
It’s a lot isn’t it? This is why children can often be reluctant to write. This and the fact that there is a packed curriculum and children can feel like they can’t produce what is required..
You might recognise some of what I’m saying and you may unfortunately find yourself with a reluctant writer. I’m going to make some suggestions for increasing engagement. They aren’t silver bullets but they might be enough to move things around and change the most important ingredient – mindset. I’ve outlined above why a child’s mindset can become negative. I will in each of my suggestions discuss the strategy and explain how it could change a child’s mindset.
Like with my Maths anxiety article I will spread suggestions over a couple of articles.
Pictures:
Talk to any teachers and if they have been teaching for a while they will probably tell you that using pictures to get children writing is a great strategy. I’m going to be using pictures are free to use as I’m putting this online and a picture I have permission to use.
Pictures can be used to get children hooked in as a stimulus.
It could be what happens when you walked through this portal?