4 practical ways and activities to improve writing skills.

                       Improving writing skills to primary children is the biggest challenge for teachers. Especially the students who are learning English as a second language are getting much trouble to improve writing skills. Here I am discussing some practical tips and activities which I have been using in my classroom to my young learners. 

                       We know very well, writing is the utmost skill. It means it's a hard skill for primary children. And in the LSRW, listening leads to speaking and reading leads to writing. So a student wants to speak he should listen well as well as he wants to write he should read well. So we should concentrate on reading to get good writing skills. But most of the teachers are not following the psychological order of language skills. So you want to develop writing skills first concentrate on speaking and reading skills. So you need to give such speaking and reading activities in order to get good writing skills.

                       So I have been using different worksheets to develop writing skills to my children. Before every writing activity, I conduct the same speaking activity to practice those language functions. 

Here are a few tips:

1. Writing tools:

              Here I used a picture dice to practice a question and answer to my 1st-grade children. I want to teach them how to ask and write a question using "who" and "what" and give the answer to the question. So I prepared a dice and pasted my class children's images. Then I told them how to ask a question like "who is this boy/girl?" and the answer is, "he/she is Ravi/Devi." Then I gave a worksheet to write the question and answers by playing the dice. Later I changed the images into objects and told them "What is this? And the answer is, This is a Chair." So this tool helped my children to get such language functions without knowing the grammar. 

              

          Below days of the week wheel helped my children to write the sentences 

"Today is Saturday. 

Tomorrow will be Sunday. 

Yesterday was Friday."

                   The time model was helped them to write a question to ask the time.

2.Trigger Worksheets:             

                    Trigger worksheets help my children to write a sentence using a word related to a picture. I prepared picture worksheets based on the completed lesson to write about a picture. I picked out key vocabulary in a lesson and prepared a worksheet by drawing the images to give the meaning of the word. You can see in the below worksheet I drew the animals and explained the skills of the animals. Like Monkey- swing, Kangaroo- hop..etc, And then I told a sentence using the words like "I am a monkey, I can swing. I am a Kangaroo, I can hop."  Like they completed the worksheet. Later I extended the activity to write about the abilities of you and your friends like "I am Rajesh I can draw." So such picture worksheets were helped a lot of my children.  

      In the below worksheet I gave the words brushing, bathing..etc. And then I ask them to write a sentence using the word like "he/she is brushing."

             To write about their favourite fruit and vegetable I gave the below worksheet along with pictures. Then I asked them to paste the pictures into the like and don't like boxes. And then I told them to write in a sentence like 

"I like mango, banana, and apple.

I don't like orange, grapes, and pomegranate."

3. Craft writing activities:

                        Children need diversity in learning. Because every child is different and regular teaching makes students into passive. So I always try to plan such craft writing activities where there is a scope. We did the below activity as a part of the lesson community helpers. I supplied the pictures and chain of the houses to every student. Later I told them to paste the images and write the names of the images. And then I told them to write a sentence "He is a doctor. She is a nurse." Like they wrote about the persons. And then I told to write He is a teacher. He teaches lessons. So the pictures and activity helped my children to write about the community helpers very easily. 

             To write about a tree I told to paint like a tree and write the advantages like

 "Tree gives us fruits.

Tree gives us wood."

To write about the transportation I gave different vehicle images and a chart. I told them to draw the road in the middle of the chart and paste the vehicles which travel on the road. And paste the vehicles travel through the air above the road, and pastes the vehicles travel on the water under the road. Later they wrote the sentences like

"A bus travels on the road.

An aeroplane travels through the air.

A ship travels on the water."

          After completion of a lesson Kids Train, I gave below worksheet to colour and write the words related to a train learned in the lesson. Then I asked them to describe the train using the words.

After completion of the lesson My School, I gave the heart-shaped petals and told them to write four reasons why do you love your school and paste like a flower.

4. Mind maps:

                 Mind maps are very useful for primary children to write about a thing, place or a person. It helps them to connect their ideas to write a big paragraph. I gave the below worksheet after the completion of the lesson "Green is Life". They wrote and explained the advantages of the trees very easily using the worksheet.

                             So different types of activities will help your children to develop writing skills. Before they write something they have to express about. So we need to plan such speaking and reading activities to make them write easily.