Ideas to encourage writing

[singinggirl]

Had DS2's report yesterday, no surprises there, excellent reading and maths, writing well below. (He is year 4 with level 4A in reading and maths, but 3C in writing). He has beautiful handwriting, fantastic spelling, excellent vocabulary and punctuation - the only problem is he writes so little that he never does a decent length piece of writing! (About two paragraphs is usually his maximum).

Any ideas with how I can help him move forward? By the way tyhe amount of writing is an improvement on last year!

Can you get him making up & writing stories about things that interest him at home - add some images & use your computer to make them into comic strips, story books - this always got my DD more interested

Or get him writing "reviews" on things you do, days out, teachers - anything that interests HIM,

Interviewing people & writing up the interviews was another that DD loved

I lost a bit & let him be as disrespectful/funny as he likes with his reviews - my DD loved that

Ooh Ooh DS slightly younger (7) but I need help with volume too. Will watch with interest.

[Pulls chair up]

Penpal?

Diary for the school holidays?

Only idea I have so far is Wii game reviews ... though he's dying to do YouTube reviews so may not work ...

@Ses - you can set up a YT account & save "favourites" for him to view - we've done that with DD - its a way of letting her watch stuff, but monitor/control what she watches - it seems to work well for us

Also thinking back - we used to do a reward scheme for DD - get her to write stories, encourage dictionary use, etc etc - we gave he "flower coins" (pennies painted with nail polish, but a boys version would be better here) for a good, long piece of work, which we marked as they would at school, but went through mistakes with her - she collected the coins for a treat

Ooh ooh rockinhippy. That's a good idea. Though what he really really wants to do is create his own game reviews, ie a running commentary while he plays. Oh dear, not enough controls at SesTowers.

Journal worked spontaneously a while ago, attached to a series of books he was partic into. But he's gone off that, we din't make him do it, he wanted to but we encouraged. He also likes making lists, of things he wants, people he likes/doesn't like, shopping etc. But it's not the creative writing/length school wants - ie story of more than 3 sentences or recounting an experience etc, or factual or ... well anything outside lists!

Maybe I should teach him to tweet or do Haiku!

Like the idea of Wii game reviews - he might not see through that one! Thanks everyone, just so frustrating that he can do everything except produce a decent quantity of work.

singin maybe take it a step further & set him up a blog where he can post his reviews - you can oversee it, but it can be somewhere he can write his opinions on games etc thats gets seen, if you can get friends & family etc to follow it & post him comments it could encourage him to do more - maybe show him the school dinners one by the girl that hit the press recently - that might inspire him

Another out of the box idea for fine motor development (not letter formation, but works the muscles the same way) is to buy tracing paper and get him to trace lots of cool pictures (star wars figures, lego boxes, moshi monsters, trucks) - whatever gets him going.

My 9yr old writing-phobic child will happily trace a detailed picture for 20-30min (I sued to sticky tape to keep it still).