Yr 2 writing tips on how to improve

[hoping2016]

My dd needs to increase the pace of her writing so she can write more in an allocated time slot. Also she seems to be a little careless with punctuation at times and lack of adjectives....any ideas as i would like to work with her over the summer...

P.s her reading is good...greater depth...however this doesn't show in her writing. Also she knows the meaning of quite a few longish words but her sentences remain quite simple !

Bump....anyone?

Why is she slow? Does she get distracted easily or has physical difficulty? Or cannot put her thoughts on the paper?

Just seems to find it hard to come up with ideas...not distracted ....she does complain her hand hurts when she has been asked to write lengthy pieces at school

Improving fine/gross motor skills might work. mrz has great list of activity you can do to improve them. Just search the past thread for "fine/gross motor skills" , loads comes up.

For ideas, try this site?
www.pobble365.com/

Thank you so much I will take a look

Bump

For ideas, we used storycubes
in the past, and ds loved it. Also used to love making his own storywheels

Ink waster

To warm up the brain and get into a creative mood - give her a topic and ask her to write as much as she can in say, one minute. Time her and ask her to count the number of words then try again with another topic. She should write as rapidly as possible. This limbers up and frees up the mind.

Video writing

Use the ink waster technique and see how much can be written in a few minutes. Turn down the sound and play a film clip. She can use this as a basis for writing as rapidly as possible - the action - the dialogue - a description - or just anything that the images trigger. It has to be fast with no pauses. If she gets stuck - just look up at what is happening and try again. There is no right or wrong. The only wrong thing is if you stop writing. Do it with her ...Who can write the most words down?

mrz, those suggestions sounds great. Definitely doing them with ds. Thanks.

For film clips there's a great site called literacy shed.

How about free writing? I do it with my classes and you can see a vast improvement over the school year.

Liadain, how do you do "free writing"?

Wow lots of good ideas thank you so much! Yes pls bit more info on free writing would be great.

It's a technique where you write continuously, for a set period of time. You can do it with no set topic, but I find it's easier to do with a chosen one. The focus is on just writing for the sake of writing, rather than worrying about spelling - I'd focus on that in other lessons.

It's very similar to what mrz describes, though I don't do the word counting.

There are all sorts of free writing prompt generators online to use - I actually used blogs for it once, which was very enjoyable for the kids. I find it's great for developing fluency in their writing.

Thank you.

I think giving a topic can help. Nothing worse than staring at a blank piece of paper trying to think what to write. Another feature of free writing is that you ignore spelling grammar structure handwriting etc so there is no external pressure

We have tried free writing today, ds picked picture by randomly choosing a date on "pobble", and requested he wanted 3 minutes, not 1.
He has written:

A stadium was sitting in the middle of the desert, the completely unknown desert. It had all sorts of muck, slime, grease, mud, but somehow the table was enchanted. With (...time was up.)

Does this serve the purpose? I think word count is way too little for 3 minutes, and his spelling, punctuation and handwriting is very good.
I think he isn't getting what he really needs to do with this practice, and I can't seem to explain it to him.

mrz?

Real life stimuli help - writing letters for real purposes.

Stage her finding a magic fairy door/magic stone etc and write an adventure story.

Jazzy paper and pens.

The website The Literacy Shed has pictures and videos with ideas - a lot of teachers use it.

I think he's trying too hard. He just needs to write anything that comes into his head. It can be random thoughts and isn't an essay.

Personally I'd avoid letters or diary entries

Perhaps you could model it for him. Pick a topic (
I'd go for something simple), then sit down and write. Set yourself a timer. Don't stop to compose it mentally as you go, just keep writing. Don't lift your pen off the page. It doesnt need to be a story, you could describe a character, or how your day went, or a memory.

Then have a look at your writing with him at the end and talk about what you did. I'd even try and drop in a few spelling errors so you can point them out and explain not to worry about them too much when free writing. That can be worrying for children.

Really, if he writes "I have nothing to say, can't think of anything, my mind is blank" when he hits a brick wall in free writing it's all right. My kids do it in class. It's just not all their writing

Agreed, mrz - he's over thinking it imo and trying to construct a story. Not a bad start, but not the point of free writing. Its just whatever comes into your head.

Thank you, mrz, that's what I thought. I said don't worry about hand writing, spelling, etc, etc. Just write down whatever came to your mind. I will try to explain better next time, at least he enjoyed doing it, wants to do it again, and now started to write rest of the story in his room. Great result, after all.

I had known literacy shed for ages, my ds's teacher introduced it to us. But can't seem to figure out how to use it.