Avid reader but not that great writer

[mom17]

DS (9 years almost) is an avid reader and I keep on insisting him learning the vocabulary. Infact most of the time I read his books and make list on vocabulary.com and ask him to learn from there. I recently purchased SAT Vocabulary Cartoons books as well and ask him to go through it. I occasionally ask him all those meanings ( not as much as I would like to do because of full time working mom) but seeing that he doesn't use it much in writing. I feel learning vocab without using it defeats the whole purpose but sometimes wonder if it is going to take more time to come to that phase as it is slow process of learning, then seeing them getting use in books and finally start using it, But the way he reads books makes me wonder if that phase will come as he literally reads vertical as in he reads just to know the story. Any idea to improve writing in reluctant writer ( reluctant to write long text but as such wants to write) ??

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I have been looking into this for my DS and it seems to be a common issue with boys! This graphic seems to be helpful if you want to try to analyse where the problems lie. My DS is younger but we have been struggling to motivate him to write so this summer I am just trying to get him to draw pictures and short notes on Minecraft - and being happy to do that everyday for a while, it means that over the summer we will build up the strength in his hand. I will probably tackle building up strength in his core with other outdoor exercises and at some point we will need to correct bad habits about forming the letters. He definitely seems to panic about knowing what to write so I have my eye on some Rory's Story Cubes and also the Usborne Books - write your own story book / comic books / adventure story for a year or so's time when he can get more than a couple of sentences down! Hope that helps and thanks for posting about the vocabulary.com it looks very interesting :)

Children build their vocabulary by communicating verbally. The word 'vocabulary' would not be expected to crop up in verbal communication more than about once a month.
You could try him with a dictaphone and then writing it down, or let him draw annotated cartoons and then tell you the story.
He reads, be thankful and don't put him off.

Thanks Penny, Camelhump. Descriptosaurus looks good, I will see dictaphone , this idea looks good.

I'm afraid that after the age of five oral conversation becomes less effective in developing vocabulary.

www.yarcsupport.co.uk/documents/devreadcomp.pdf

www.thecommunicationtrust.org.uk/media/7412/universally_speaking_5-11_final.pdf

www.eisd.net/cms/lib04/TX01001208/Centricity/Domain/827/Building_Vocablulary_ppt.ppt

Thanks. Will try all these.

Apples to apples game?

Is he reluctant to use words he doesn't know how to spell? What sort of books does he read? We have Descriptosaurus - it's quite good as a reference book but don't expect your ds to remember more than a few words and phrases at a time. Perhaps he is overwhelmed by the amount of new vocab you want him to learn - could you create a 'bank' of 20 or so interesting words you'd like him to use in his writing and concentrate on those same 20 words over a period of a few months before moving on to new words?

Clavinova, I guess you are right. I want him to learn his vocab list before he starts reading same series again. He has finished reading twice All genronimo, Enid blyton, 39 clues, series of unfortunate events. Now reading Warriors, Unicorn chronicles, Artemis fowl. My aim is to reach to a level where he can start heeding contents of books he is reading rather than just reading to know the story which I guess is possible when you have mastered a certain level of vocab so that you can heed on usage of those words and start using those.
I have just ordered "Descriptosauras", hope its good and we are able to use it properly( which is most important).

Read each chapter before he begins and pick out key vocab you think will be useful to him. Give him a word a day ... He has to find out what it means and he gets a small reward for every time he uses the word correctly in a sentence. In school my children collect stars and the child who collects mists get to choose a reward (items from the party bag section of the supermarket) at home it could be additional screen time or saved up for something special

CamelHump, I got the book but even after seeing CD, I am bit clueless as How to make use of it. Do I make DS read it or I read it and ask him to write Noun, Verb, Adjective on certain topic and then joining all those to make sentence ? if I ask him to use as a reference, I am sure he will just copy those sentences so where is the creativity ? Or should I help him write his own sentence then he will not be able to make more than few. So where and How I do I intervene ? Does it mean I will have to memorize those sentences ? as seeing those in front of kid will create wrong path of learning. It should child to think. Had it been good if Author has also included some prompt related to those areas.

descriptosaurus challenge

www.literacytrust.org.uk/assets/0001/8177/Descriptosaurus_poster.pdf

My question is related to giving them book or use it a parents reference so that they use their mind. I am not sure How much it will useful if they are allowed to use it as reference book.

And my links are ideas how to use the book most effectively. It's a reference book like a dictionary/thesaurus/ encyclopaedia

I am yet to see result but still wondering using it as reference will be helpful or not ?, as they are merely going to copy sentence and words from that. But may be reusing those sentence over the period will lead to thinking how to construct on their own. Though I am sure writing Noun, verbs, adjective, using them in sentence will surely give them ground work for writing.

The introduction provides ideas for parents

For noun you might show him a picture of a scene and he has to decide on an appropriate noun relating to the scene. Then improve it by choosing adjectives and writing a sentence or paragraph to describe what he sees.
Or give him a character name and from that he has to create a description .
Give him a boring sentence and he has to improve it

Thanks mrz