I wanted to share a technique I've been using with my kids to improve their sentence structure, vocabulary, grammar, and especially management of narrative tension. And it works for any age.
Every day, I write one line or thought within our shared story. I then send it to my child who adds one line of his/her own, saves the new version and sends it back. I annotate track changes with any suggestions or simple corrections of grammar, add a new line of my own and send it back.
And so on and so on.
Just five minutes a day, sometimes less, of nurtured creative writing has really got us over a hump of 'I can't do it' - and made searching for exciting metaphors and tone-switches and narrative 'voice' a real pleasure. And it's fun for me too...(grownups also make mistakes!).
If anyone else has tried this, or wants to, I'd love to hear your thoughts...