Speaker 1: Hello everyone, today we're going to be talking about how to help your children become better writers. So writing is an extremely important skill because it translates to all areas in life. You can have an adult or a child that's really smart, but if they cannot put their thoughts down on paper in a logical, coherent, and creative way, then they're not going to be an effective communicator and they're going to have these weaknesses of not being able to organize their thoughts and put them down on paper. So in order to be an effective, powerful communicator, you need to be a good writer. Today I'm going to share with you a writing routine and how we don't use a curriculum for writing and how we get our kids to write every single day. So what we do is we have our children write one page a day. And there's a variety of things that we have them do in these one page a day. So starting with copy work, that's one thing that we start off with doing, it's very easy. Just having them do copy work, even if it's just once, twice a week, they are learning sentence structure, they're learning grammar, they're learning how to write well. So for copy work, we use all types of things. They can copy a poem from a poem book, for example. And that'll be their one page a day. And then they'll draw maybe a picture there. And I'll be linking all these resources below. Sometimes we'll have them copy from encyclopedias so that they're learning content knowledge. And so they can just pick any page and just write these facts down. And they're learning about friction, about simple machines, about pressure, all types of things in these books. The same thing goes with other encyclopedias, like animal encyclopedias, they can write about different animals. And so they're doing copy work that they're also learning from. I love the Draw Right Now series. And this is for younger ones, I would say kindergarten to like second grade. And what they do with this book is that there is copy work. And so they're writing the copy work for that particular day, and then they're drawing the animal or the scene. And so they're learning to draw and write at the same time. And I think this series brings like eight books, eight to 10 books, I forget, but I will link it below for you guys. Another thing is that I have my kids copy things in Spanish. So there's like little books in Spanish. And I'll have them do it for a few days until they're done with the book. And they're learning how to write well in Spanish. My older kids can read Spanish. So it's a good practice for them. Like it's really good writing. Look how this sounds. Un ratoncito vivía en la selva, no salgas nunca de día. And it's just like, it's just the way that it sounds, the way that the writer writes. So that's really good copy work. So we'll do that like once or two times a week, depending on the child's age. And then the other things that we incorporate for our one page a day are story writing. So writing your own stories. And we have templates on how to break down and how to map the stories. Just want the kids to just free write, even if it's not a story. Just tell me your thoughts. Talk about how your day, how your weekend went. Tell me about your favorite toy. Talk to me about your favorite hobby. And so whatever I tell them, just write about whatever you want in that one page. And it's just getting kids to free write, you know, just write, write, write. Getting them comfortable with putting their thoughts on paper is extremely important. Because one of the things that a lot of people that have trouble writing is that they have writer's block. And it's just that they just freeze. They just don't know how to put their thoughts down on paper, how to start. So it's really important just to get this habit of having children write every day. Writing stories, writing their thoughts down. Whatever they want, just write a page a day. And what I do is, when they're done, I will go and correct their writing. And I will have a pen and I will just go and correct the grammars, the grammatical errors, the run on sentences. And if I see a lot of sloppiness or a lot of errors, I will have them write it over again. Or if I just see something that I see over and over again, like a particular word that they keep misspelling, I'll have them write it on the next page. I just have them write those words that they've misspelled on the next page. And that's the way we do it. So we also like incorporating in our one page a day book report. So let's say that they've read a book and they've finished it, I'll have them write a book report. And I have templates for that. I'm going to share with you guys in our writing folder all the different templates that we use. And so we'll have them fill out this template for this book, like the title, the author. Give us the rating, how much you like this book. Tell us what the setting was. Who were the characters? Who were the main characters? Tell us what happened in the beginning, middle, and end, and so on. And so we do that. We don't always do that for every single book they read, but we like to do at least one book report a month just to get them to write about what they've read and how to summarize. Another thing that I have been getting my children prepared in is writing in the four types of writing. So narrative, expository, descriptive, and persuasive writing. So I will give the children writing prompts and I will say, I want you to write a descriptive paragraph about this writing prompt. Or I want you to answer this writing prompt in an expository paragraph. So learning how to write in these four types of ways is very important because they're going to use it for high school. They are going to use these types of writing for college. Some colleges even use it for their entrance exams and they'll have the students write in these forms. They'll give them essays. They'll say, write an expository essay about this or that. So it's really important to get them exposed and comfortable in writing in these four types of writing. And so we'll do paragraphs about this writing. We'll do also essays. We like to do at least one essay a month where the child is taking their time to map out their essays. We have templates for all that. And then we do the first draft, second draft. We have them. This year we're going to start having them type their essays so that they're practicing their typewriting. So we have everything organized in a binder and I have had this binder for a couple years now. I have added some new things this year. So I'm really excited about this writing folder because it helps children be independent with their writing. So in here they'll find all the templates for everything. How to write a paragraph, how to write an essay, how to write a book report. Everything is in here, even some basic poetry. So I'm going to go ahead and bring you a little closer to show you the writing folder and how we use it here at home. All right, so here's the writing folder and you can have one per child or you can have one per classroom. And it starts off with paragraph planning and it has a topic sentence, three details and conclusions. So they'll plan out their paragraph, write it all out and then proceed to writing it out on a piece of paper. It also has checklists. I like including checklists so the children can check their work. For example, does your topic sentence tell the reader what your paragraph will be about in an interesting way? So they'll check, does every sentence start with a capital letter and end with a period? So they'll check their sentences and so it really gives them a way to become aware of their writing and make it better. Here's a longer paragraph template. Then we have topic sentence starters so that the child, um, sometimes children have problems with introductory paragraphs and how to get started. This is going to give them ways and ideas on how to do that. Then we go to conclusion examples, um, and how to end your paragraph. So in conclusion, to sum up overall, it is clear, certainly, finally, it gives them a, an example of a good conclusion and things to be careful for. Here we have an essay planner now and so it has the attention grabber for the introduction and the thesis. So there's all the introduction. Then this is a three point essay, it has 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, the conclusion, it has the essay checklist, attention grabbers, thesis statement, how to, how to make one, how, or some examples of, of thesis statements. Then transitions, you know, children need to learn how to have paragraphs be smoothly, how to go from one paragraph to another. So I have transition words in addition to, moreover, furthermore, besides, not only, but also using first, second, finally, next, above all. And so this is going to help them use transition words. And so like, if I see that there's a paragraph that doesn't have a smooth transition, I'll say, go to your transition worksheet and pick out a transition to put into this paragraph in the beginning. And so this, this is why it's great to have these binders. Then I go into the four ways of writing. And so I'll break it down, I'll say what that type of writing is. I'll have examples of how they can write a descriptive writing paragraph or essay. And then I'll have important things that they need to focus on when writing this type of writing. And then I'll have writing prompts for each type of writing. So this is really helpful for me and the student alike, because I can just say, today we're going to be writing a descriptive paragraph, let's go pick out a writing prompt. And it goes on like that with all the types of writing, it has the, it describes it. And then it has a writing prompts for, for each. So this is a great thing to have to explain the four types of writing and to have writing prompts for, for each. Then I go into like a little bit of poetry in this binder. So other standard poems that children should know, like the haiku poem, for example, I tell them what the haiku poem is, examples of a haiku poem, and then templates. This is what I love this binder because it has a lot of templates and how to break things down. So I'll tell the child, today we're going to be doing a haiku poem, here's the template, here's what it looks like, here's some examples. And so it's great. So let's skip around and move on to other things. Here's a book report. So this is going to be for the child reporting on a book. So title, author, the rating of the book, is it fiction, nonfiction, the setting, the characters. I want you to tell me the plot of that story. Give me a summary of what happened in that story. And then what is your favorite part and would you recommend it to a friend? So this is just a great thing to have. Here we have story mind mapping for children writing stories again. We want them to really break it down if they're going to be writing a story, setting, characters, the title, problem, action, outcome. So it really helps them get it together. Let's skip around over here. Now we're going to talk about dressing up your writing, making it more creative. I have a list of creative adverbs. Let me show you. So for example, calmly, carefully, carelessly, cautiously, cheerfully. So using creative adverbs like this is going to really help their writing turn from dull to creative. And we also have creative verbs so that they can start making their writing a little bit more creative. I have a list of from dull to creative verbs. So instead of using the word have, for example, you can use possess, attain, experience, own, manage, enjoy. So it really gives them a good list of that. It goes on to creative adjectives as well. And so it's just a good binder to have all together. I can't show you the whole thing because for the sake of the video, but if you guys want a copy of this writing folder and other templates inside and other things, I'm going to link it below in the description box so that you guys can get it. It's a download. So you guys can just print it off for your students or your classroom. All right. So let's wrap it up now. All right. So there you have it. You don't need a curriculum to teach your children kindergarten through eighth grade how to write. You can have them write one page a day. You know, starting with copy work, you can do copy work once at times a week where they're copying songs, poems, even verses from the Bible, things from encyclopedias. Then you can have them write their own stories, write writing prompts, write book reports, write poems in their one page a day. And by the end of the year, they're going to have a notebook full of all the writing and their copy work and their poems and their stories and their free writing. And it's going to be such a beautiful keepsake. I really love this binder because it has everything I need in here. It breaks down the four types of writing. And if I need them to write a book report, let's say, I just say, let's go ahead and take out your book report template so that we can write a book report about this book. Or if I want them to write a paragraph about something, or if I want them to write a descriptive paragraph today. I'll go ahead and I pull the writing prompt from the descriptive writing prompts. And it's just really handy folder. So I'm going to link it below if you guys want a copy of it. We've had it for a couple of years. I've added more things this year that I think is really, really helpful. I hope you guys have enjoyed my video and I hope it gives you more confidence that you can teach your children to write. It's really easy. It's simple. And it just requires them to write a little every day. The more they write, the better they become. Hope you enjoy the video. I also wanted to mention, I will be coming up with a writing workshop. I've been working on it for you guys. It's just been so busy. But as soon as I am done with the writing workshop, I'm going to be letting you all know. So if you want to know when I release my writing workshop, you can sign up to my email list and I'll send it right over to you whenever I'm done with it. But this is just another portion where I break it down and I show you my kids notebooks. I show you step every step of the way and how I teach writing here in my home a more in depth way rather than just using the binder, which is this is a lot. A lot of what I do comes from this binder that I've created. In the workshop, I'm really going to break it down for you guys who maybe have forgotten about writing, how to write, how to how to structure paragraphs and essays. I'm going to break it down in this workshop. So if you subscribe to my newsletter, I'll let you know when that's coming out. I hope you have enjoyed this video and I'll see you in the next one. Bye.