Love some advice to support Y5 DC's confidence in his creative writing

[sydenhamhiller]

DC1 in Year 5 is doing well, but he reeeeeeeally hates having to do any writing homework, and whenever we have free choice of homework, I have fallen into the trap of giving him maths - which he loves - to avoid the moaning...

What can I do to help him? We get tasks in his homework journal such as 'write a letter to your favourite author' and he just freezes. When he does the work, it's great...His written work at school is great, he's level 4A. It's just getting over the aversion to doing it at home, and improve his confidence.

I'd be so grateful if anyone could give me some tips on how to approach this, how to help him break tasks down so not so scary, and make him feel confident in his abilities...

I'm not surprised he hates "writing a letter to his favourite author". What is he really interested in? It's hard to be creative when you are not fully engaged.

Would he do the writing if it was on a computer? Many boys are happier typing than hand writing. Have you got a gadget that would enable him to record his story if he spoke it? Something like Dragon Speaking Naturally (I think it's called) or a similar app could then convert it into typing and then the effort could go into improving/polishing the work.

Giving him the chance to talk his writing through before he starts - discussing ideas with him & making sure he knows how to begin would also be helpful. Or you could use a website like www.storybird.com - not only do the completed stories look great, they can be published so others can see them & comment on them.

Finally, is he averse to both fiction & non fiction writing? Writing a report or set of instructions or persuasive piece is just as important (if not more so) than being able to write stories - how often in adult life do you write a story? Again, it's not unusual for boys to be more motivated by non-fiction than fiction. Perhaps get him to write about something he's done - a visit somewhere, how to make something, persuade you to let him stay up late to watch a particular programme etc etc etc. Writing for a purpose, it's called in the trade!!

Agree Bonsoir , the journal is terrible, and hardly changed since Year 1... I think the typing idea is a good one, anything that inv

Agree Bonsoir , the journal is terrible, and hardly changed since Year 1... I think the typing idea is a good one, anything that involves a screen.
Thanks for the ideas.

sydenhamhiller:

Agree with typing idea - he can print out work and paste it into homework journal, so no problems with it being for school work (and in secondary school most work will be on computer anyway).

May be an idea (if you haven't already) to introduce learning touch typing now - thus you have a virtuous circle 'writing' is actually learning 'touch typing' and knowing where keys are and able to type relatively well makes writing easier.

BBC has free touch typing programme here: www.bbc.co.uk/schools/typing/

There also is a great sponge bob square pants PC game to teach you touch typing: www.amazon.co.uk/Typing-Learn-Type-SpongeBob-way/dp/B0007LDI5Q

DD1 (also Y6) prefers spongebob - thinks BBC version is a bit babyish.

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In terms of improving creative writing - have him think through 5 senses:

How does it feel?
What did you smell?
What did you see?
What did you hear?
What did you taste?

e.g. storm coming

We could feel the temperature drop and hear the wind howl down the valley. The raindrops tasted fresh and sweet and it pelted against the aluminium roof of our shed, deafening all of us. We could see there even darker clouds gathering and coming toward us and had no choice but to run across the yard into the safety of the house.

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A game I played with DD1 last year was write a sentence & make it better.

e.g. Harry Potter is a wizard.

Harry Potter is a ten year old boy who is a wizard.

Although Harry potter appears to be an ordinary ten-year-old boy, he is secretly a wizard.

and so on....

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In the car you can play the 'sentence game' where everyone adds a word:

There

There once

There once was

There once was a mouse

There once was a mouse named

There once was a mouse named Hercules....

helps build imagination and word play

HTH

pastsellbydate that is all brilliant, thank you , love the embellishing a simple sentence idea.

My ds is similar and would rather poke his eyes out than write a journal.

One teacher suggested getting him to make his own fact books. Ds loves reading animal fact books and books about volcanos etc. He was keen on the idea but still did it reluctantly.

Ds finds writing a real chore. His writing is neat but he is very slow and I am wondering if he has something like dysgraphia.

Just noticed that he is a level 4a. That's great . I wouldn't worry too much it's probably just something he isn't interested in even though he is good at it.

Dh is like this. His standard of English and written work is of a much higher standard than mine but he hates writing with a passion. I'm not very good at writing but really enjoy it.