Writing Strategies – Higher Order Thinking

Excerpted from All Kinds of Minds: www.allkindsofminds.org

Higher-Order Thinking

Use graphic organizers to organize ideas. Encourage your child to map out what she wants to say before she begins writing. Have her number her ideas in order of presentation. Suggest that she diagram or draw her ideas before starting to write. You can find many examples of graphic organizers on the Internet.

Practice idea generation through storytelling. For example, present a picture and ask your child to tell you about the picture. He may need some specific, but open-ended questions to help him get started (e.g., “what happened just before?” “what will happen next?”).

Encourage your child to use brainstorming before starting an assignment. Start the brainstorming process with something of interest to your child. Allow her to brainstorm in any way she prefers – for example, if your child has difficulty with writing, let her brainstorm orally.

Use sentence starters to trigger thoughts. Ask your child to finish a sentence, such as “Jack runs… .” Probe by asking him questions about the sentence starter, such as, “What kind of person was Jack?” and “Where was Jack running?”

Provide a story ending. Challenge your child to create the beginning and middle of the story to fit the ending.

Writing Strategies – Memory

Excerpted from All Kinds of Minds: www.allkindsofminds.org

Memory

Learn the rules of spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. An example of a spelling rule is “change the ‘y’ to ‘i’ and add ‘er’.” A sample capitalization rule is “always capitalize the names of places.” Ask your child to explain the rule as needed. For example, if she has spelled the word “easier” as “easyer,” she should be asked what rule applies, say it aloud, and then make her corrections.

Break writing assignments into steps or stages. Make brainstorming the first stage, drafting ideas the second stage, revision the third stage, and correcting spelling and grammar the last stage before the final draft. Spread out the stages over time.

Generate ideas apart from writing. Allow your child to record his ideas on a planning sheet or into a tape recorder that he reads or listens to later when he is ready to write.

Reduce the emphasis on certain subskills. Place priority on getting ideas down on paper, without worrying about spelling or punctuation.

Writing Strategies – Language

Excerpted from All Kinds of Minds: www.allkindsofminds.org

Language

Create a personal dictionary. Encourage your child to write down words that interest her or that she learns from reading. These words can be used as a reference for writing.

Use a tape recorder to store thoughts. Discussing her thoughts might organize your child’s ideas before she begins to write. She can then transcribe her dictation.

Read writing aloud while editing it. Teach your child how to listen for where sentences begin and end so that he may apply proper punctuation and capitalization and listen for grammatical errors.

Practice the sequencing of ideas. Your child might write ideas or sentences on strips of paper and then order the strips before writing.

Use transition words. Give your child a list of transition words and phrases, and show her how to practice using these words to unite sentences and paragraphs. Examples of transition words include: “previously,” “afterward,” “finally,” “as a result,” “subsequently,” and “furthermore.”

Provide keywords. Help your child create a list of words related to the writing topic of his choice. Then encourage him to use all of the words in his sentences. For instance, a paragraph about spiders might include: “spider,” “legs,” “eyes,” “web,” etc.

Provide opportunities for your child to practice speaking. Encourage your child to express ideas and elaborate on them in everyday speech. Build in opportunities for oral reports and discussions on topics that interest her.

Practice elaboration. Use visual stimuli to trigger speech. Ask your child to describe, explain, or elaborate on photographs, illustrations, and pictures. Frame questions that are designed to elicit responses requiring more than one-word answers – for example, rather than ask him if he liked a television program (answer could be yes or no), ask him to describe what he liked best and least about the program.

Writing Strategies – Attention

Excerpted from All Kinds of Minds: www.allkindsofminds.org

Attention

Help your child get started. Assist your child by making sure she has the right writing tools available and has an organized workspace. If needed, provide a jump-start to help her begin, such as the first sentence of a paragraph.

Build in planning time. Give your child five minutes of planning time before beginning an assignment. Provide guidance in effective planning when necessary.

Provide guidelines for an age-appropriate narrative. For instance, provide a checklist:

• Characters (appearance and feelings)
• Setting (time and geography)
• Place (climate, government, economy, culture)
• Events (what happened, what was the cause, sequence, conclusion, far-reaching results)

Preview. Help your child get started on assignments by encouraging him to think ahead of time about the completed assignment and what it will look like or what he will do in the assignment. Have your child make a list of materials he will need to write his book report or have him outline what information he will include in his story or report. Ask him to consider what he will need to describe in the beginning and middle of a story so his ending will make sense.

Use a strategy such as PLAN to help organize writing and free your child to brainstorm ideas.

Preview the assignment – think about things such as the purpose and audience.

List the main topics you plan to write about, along with details for each.

Assign an order for the topics.

Note ideas in complete sentences.

Increase awareness of writing quality. Ask your child to set a letter grade goal or other measure of work quality for her writing prior to beginning. Then have her self-grade or appraise the quality of her work before turning it in to the teacher.

Provide models of assignments and criteria for success. Give your child a clear sense of how a final product might look by showing examples and sharing exceptional products (e.g., essays or drawings). For instance, make work from last year available, and draw your child’s attention to specific qualities of the work (e.g., “Notice that a good paper has a clear topic sentence.”). Do not, however, compare your child’s work with that of peers or siblings.

Self-monitor. During a writing task, teach your child how to stop and evaluate how well he is doing. For example, tell him, “Every ten minutes you will need to stop and check to see if you are getting your point across.” Teach your child to ask himself questions such as, “How is it going?” and “Do I need to make changes?”

Teach proven strategies. Provide your child with specific age-appropriate strategies to use in checking work. For example, use Dr. Donald D. Deshler’s COPS (Capitalization-Organization-Punctuation-Spelling) for proofing written work. Your child can create a reminder card to keep on her desk or in her assignment book for quick reference to the strategy.

Let your child delay editing work. The day before an assignment is due, have your child review his work and read it to an adult. This will give him enough perspective to catch errors or add more details and produce better results. Attention
Help your child get started. Assist your child by making sure she has the right writing tools available and has an organized workspace. If needed, provide a jump-start to help her begin, such as the first sentence of a paragraph.

Build in planning time. Give your child five minutes of planning time before beginning an assignment. Provide guidance in effective planning when necessary.

Provide guidelines for an age-appropriate narrative. For instance, provide a checklist:

• Characters (appearance and feelings)
• Setting (time and geography)
• Place (climate, government, economy, culture)
• Events (what happened, what was the cause, sequence, conclusion, far-reaching results)

Preview. Help your child get started on assignments by encouraging him to think ahead of time about the completed assignment and what it will look like or what he will do in the assignment. Have your child make a list of materials he will need to write his book report or have him outline what information he will include in his story or report. Ask him to consider what he will need to describe in the beginning and middle of a story so his ending will make sense.

Use a strategy such as PLAN to help organize writing and free your child to brainstorm ideas.

Preview the assignment – think about things such as the purpose and audience.

List the main topics you plan to write about, along with details for each.

Assign an order for the topics.

Note ideas in complete sentences.

Increase awareness of writing quality. Ask your child to set a letter grade goal or other measure of work quality for her writing prior to beginning. Then have her self-grade or appraise the quality of her work before turning it in to the teacher.

Provide models of assignments and criteria for success. Give your child a clear sense of how a final product might look by showing examples and sharing exceptional products (e.g., essays or drawings). For instance, make work from last year available, and draw your child’s attention to specific qualities of the work (e.g., “Notice that a good paper has a clear topic sentence.”). Do not, however, compare your child’s work with that of peers or siblings.

Self-monitor. During a writing task, teach your child how to stop and evaluate how well he is doing. For example, tell him, “Every ten minutes you will need to stop and check to see if you are getting your point across.” Teach your child to ask himself questions such as, “How is it going?” and “Do I need to make changes?”

Teach proven strategies. Provide your child with specific age-appropriate strategies to use in checking work. For example, use Dr. Donald D. Deshler’s COPS (Capitalization-Organization-Punctuation-Spelling) for proofing written work. Your child can create a reminder card to keep on her desk or in her assignment book for quick reference to the strategy.

Let your child delay editing work. The day before an assignment is due, have your child review his work and read it to an adult. This will give him enough perspective to catch errors or add more details and produce better results.

Writing Strategies – Graphomotor

Excerpted from All Kinds of Minds: www.allkindsofminds.org

Graphomotor

Find the right writing instrument. Make sure your child feels a sense of control with the pen or pencil. Try aids such as pencil grips. Suggest using pencils – they provide more friction on the paper than pens, do not smear easily, and can be erased.

Allow your child to print. If your child is having difficulty writing, consider postponing cursive writing or give him the choice of cursive or print.

Provide technology. Make tools available that facilitate writing, such as computers. Teach touch-typing. Allow your child to record her ideas on audiotape and then transcribe them, or take dictation of your child’s story and have her review and revise the written product.

Provide specialized paper. Your child can use writing paper with raised lines and cued left and right margins to guide letter formations, size, and spacing

Ensure the optimum setup for writing. Are your child’s chair and desk a good fit in terms of height, stability, and slant? (A child may find a slanted work surface, such as a desk easel, helpful for writing and drawing.) Is she more stable with the paper taped to the desk or held by a magnetic paper holder rather than having to hold it with her free arm? Is she more comfortable writing on the floor while lying on the carpet, or at waist level sitting upright at a desk, or at an upright surface like the chalkboard?

Provide a model. If your child presses down too hard on his paper, have him draw a line exerting appropriate pressure while you observe. Whenever your child is writing, have him compare the lines in his writing with the model line and adjust pencil pressure as necessary.

Writing Strategies – General

Excerpted from All Kinds of Minds: www.allkindsofminds.org

General

Create a safe environment for writing. . Balance feedback between what is good about the writing and what needs improvement. Always highlight whatever is positive in your child’s writing. Avoid comparing one child’s writing with another’s.

Evaluate content and mechanics separately. Help your child to see that she may have good ideas and still need to work on a particular writing subskill. Always correct any grammatical or other speech errors in a private, respectful way.

Encourage a variety of writing activities. Keeping a daily journal can be motivating and can provide needed practice. Consider other fun writing tasks such as writing to pen pals, composing songs, and/or recording family trips.

Reading Strategies – Attention

Excerpted from All Kinds of Minds: www.allkindsofminds.org

Attention

Model reading as enjoyable. Let your child see family members enjoying reading. You might informally discuss what you are reading. Have DEAR time several times a week where everyone “Drops Everything And Reads” for 20 minutes.

Certain times should be set aside each day for high motivational reading. Magazine subscriptions and visits to the library can facilitate this process.

Help your child get started. Read the first part of a story or passage to or with your child. Siblings and classmates can also participate by taking turns reading paragraphs or short sections.

Draw attention to omissions and substitution of words. Your child might benefit from making a tape-recording of her own reading. Then, she should play the tape back and listen to herself reading while she follows the text closely. She should grade her own reading by marking up the text to make it a transcript of the tape.

Develop techniques for self-monitoring. Show your child how to test himself by creating a list of questions to determine if he has understood and retained what he read. If he is unable to answer a question, show him how to find the correct answer in the passage or how to figure it out from what the passage said.

Provide a clear ruler to help your child keep his place while reading. If he skips a line, help him to notice that what he is reading does not make sense.

Focus attention by using reading organizers. Mapping techniques and organizers such as a story outline help children become familiar with the structure of stories and keep track of story elements as they read. Make this a hands-on activity by using markers to identify each story element.

An Example Story Outline

Title: ___________
Setting: ___________
Characters: ___________
Problem: ___________
Event 1: ___________
Event 2: ___________
Event 3: ___________
Event 4: ___________
Outcome: ___________

Set goals and record progress. Have your child set a short-term goal, such as completing all homework for the week. Record, and share with your child, the daily progress toward the goal. Graphic recording, such as plotting their own line graphs, may be particularly reinforcing for some children.

Jot down significant information on sticky notes. Then if your child has trouble deciding what is important, help her reposition her notes appropriately.

Teach and model the use of information in textbooks. Coach your child by providing him with a structure before reading the chapter: first read the questions at the end of the chapter; then look for important information in the pictures; read the captions; look for key terms, concepts, or people that are probably written in bold or italicized text or already underlined.

Reading Strategies – Retention

Excerpted from All Kinds of Minds: www.allkindsofminds.org

Retention

Use rereading for remembering. Teach your child how to highlight or underline as she reads; then encourage her to reread what she has underlined. Have your child separate reading a passage for meaning from rereading the same passage for remembering.

Model the processes you use to remember. Describe a picture you create in your mind to help you understand and remember what you read, or show your child how you remember what you read by making connections between the text and what you already know about the topic.

Suggest techniques for remembering. Use memory aids, called mnemonics, to help your child remind himself of information. One example is H.O.M.E.S., in which each letter represents one of the Great Lakes: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior. Other memory aids might include creating cartoons; using mental imagery; or constructing sentences with the first letter from each concept, such as Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally for the order of mathematics operations: parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction.

Summarize and review. Have your child recap short passages or chapters, possibly recording key ideas on Post-it® Notes or reading his summaries into a tape recorder. Continue a story over several days so your child can summarize what happened each day and recall this information before the next reading.

Build reading self-awareness. Increase your child’s awareness of reading strategies she already uses. For example, does she visualize (form pictures in his mind while she reads) or subvocalize (whisper important information under her breath)? Encourage her to build on her own preferred strategies.

Connect yesterday’s reading to today’s. Continue a story over several days. Have your child make predictions about what he thinks will happen; then compare those predictions to what actually happens in the story.

Use self-questioning strategies. Have your child develop a list of questions to answer after reading. These questions and answers can become the basis of parent-child discussions. Have your child make a Think Aloud Bookmark. On the bookmark, have her write questions to ask herself after each section. She can personalize it with decorations.

Connect reading to what your child knows. Have your child discuss what he already knows about a topic before reading. Then have him list the things he would like to learn about the topic, and make predictions about whether the assigned reading will include these things or not.

Read in stages. Break lengthy passages into short segments. Ask your child to summarize each section as soon as she finishes reading it, or have her write a brief summary for herself at the end of each section.

Use strategies to recall important information. For instance, ask your child to make up lyrics to a favorite turn or a rap, using the information he needs to remember.

Reading Strategies – Comprehension

Excerpted from All Kinds of Minds – www.allkindsofminds.org

Comprehension

Build on your child’s knowledge. Select reading topics that enhance subject matter previously covered in school or that reflect your child’s interests. Encourage her to develop expertise in a subject and to read different types of texts about that subject, such as articles, books, and online materials.

Draw inferences and make predictions about text. Ask your child to stop frequently and think about what will happen next. Also, ask him other questions that will require him to make educated guesses.

Engage several pathways. Use pictures and diagrams to explain concepts; use stories on tape or tell stories; and encourage your child to interpret stories through drawings, models, or other constructions. Teach your child to “make movies in his head” as she reads, visualizing the setting and events. Stop after a few paragraphs or pages and ask her to describe his “movie.”

Help your child access grade-level text books. Show him how to preview the text by looking at charts, pictures, dark headings, and captions before he begins to read.

Focus on important information. Before your child begins reading challenging material, offer an outline of the key ideas or help her make diagrams or charts that capture key concepts as she reads.

Use the “KWL” strategy. To help your child comprehend how language works and to reflect upon his own degree of understanding, teach him how to think through: What I Know, What I Want to Learn, What I Learned.

Select a strategy. Before your child begins reading, have her write down the reading comprehension strategy she plans to use. She might choose guiding questions, highlighting or underlining significant details, writing comments in the margin, or summarizing after each paragraph.

Learn a new word every day. Subscribe to a website (e.g., www.websters.com) to receive a new word every day that includes a definition, pronunciation, and the word being used in a sentence. Encourage your child to learn and use the new word throughout the day.

Help your child locate main ideas and important details. Suggest that he think about the “5 Ws” as he reads: Who? What? When? Where? Why? Post these questions on a wall or have your child write them on a sheet of paper he keeps nearby or uses as a bookmark.

Reading Strategies – Decoding

Excerpted from All Kinds of Minds – www.allkindsofminds.org

Decoding

Build awareness of word sounds. Play rhyming games, such as having your child finish sentences by filling in a rhyming word. For example, say, “I like to run. It’s so much ____.” For a variation on this game, say a word and have your child say one that rhymes with it.

Play listening games for letter-sound correspondence. Say a sentence and have your child clap when she hears a word that starts or ends with a particular consonant ( p ), or consonant blend ( st ).

Reinforce sight words. Use flashcards to reinforce commonly used words like “the,” ‘and,” “to,” and “is.”

Encourage multiple word attack strategies. For example, when presented with a nonsense word such as “vorse,” your child can attempt to sound it out sequentially, but he also needs to look to see if there are any little words in it that he is sure of (“or”) and any familiar chunks that are from known words (“-orse” from “horse”).

Involve several pathways. Read aloud together so your child can see and hear the words being read. Use books on tape that allow your child to read as she listens. Sing a song that uses words with the sounds that your child is working on. Read the words to songs she likes.

Preview text and highlight five or six “difficult” words. When your child gets to the highlighted word, teach him specific strategies for how to decode, define, and relate the word to the story. (Consider buying erasable highlighting tape).

Write using word families. Encourage your child to write stories or poems using words in word families, such as op (mop, hop, stop, pop), that she is working on. Your child might underline or highlight the repetitive pattern. Ask her to read her stories or poems aloud to you or read them to each other.

Teach rules. Some children benefit from learning rules about decoding (e.g., when there are two vowels together in a word, the first vowel often says its name and the second one is silent). Once your child has learned the rule for a vowel combination, remind him to follow it when he encounters that vowel combination in his reading.

Play word games. Word games and puzzles are fun and also build vocabulary and word understanding. Try crossword puzzles, word bingo, Scrabble^®, or Boggle^®.

Read aloud every day. Read and encourage your child to read directions, labels, and signs in the classroom, at home, in the car, and at stores or shops. Have your child take turns reading aloud with a friend, parent, or sibling. Discuss what you are reading.