Teaching Young Learners Creative Writing Skills

Writing is one of the most important methods of communication and it is a vital tool for education. As parents, we strive to provide a holistic and balanced upbringing for our children. However, in addition to creating a supportive environment at home and school, we need to encourage children’s imaginations and creativity as well. Encouraging children to write creatively is the best way to accomplish this.

In addition to being an invaluable life skill, creative writing will help your child to express his or her thoughts, both at school and later in a variety of professional settings. It is also one of the elemental quests that will help your child be more self-aware.

There are numerous ways to help improve the child’s creative writing skills and nurture them as ace communicators. Writing skills can be comprehensive and used for different styles such as creative writing, business writing, formulating internal communication in schools, public and private organisations and other avenues.

Some types of writing skills we can teach our children are mentioned below:

1. Creative Writing To fire the imagination, spark curiosity and develop a story, this is the best form of writing to get children started. Children can begin with short sentences and slowly expand to paragraphs and stories depending upon their progress and comfort level. This not only boosts their grammar, phonics and reading skills but also builds their confidence.
   Recommended exercises
   • a. Set their imagination on fire by asking them to write about their favourite aspiration and what the future would look like
   • b. Re-imagine a much-loved story of their choice. It could be a fairy tale or any other story that touched them.
2. Narrative Writing
   A good story with characters, plot, drama & climax sprinkled with lots of imagination can do wonders, for the youngsters. It also introduces them to structured thinking, reasoning, understanding situations via stories & open doors to building life skills and human emotions like empathy and more.
   Recommended exercises
   a. Teach them to have descriptive opening lines in their story
   b. Introduce some conflict between the main character with the antagonist
   c. Evolve a dramatic high point
   d. Have a conclusion or end of their choice
3. Persuasive Writing
   A cohesive summary based on reasoning and logic is usually the key to good persuasive writing. It’s a form of opinion that works through this style. It banks on emotion, reasoning, analysis, critical thinking depending on the plot, a balanced outlook and a conclusion.
   Recommended exercises
   a. The children can be grouped and give examples of this writing style. Ask them to choose a topic and explain why they decided to form an opinion. Encourage them to back it up with some reasoning.
4. Formal writing
   a. Typically, formal writing follows a set of rules and a format within which a writing piece can be framed. Examples of this include letter writing, school circular, newsletter formulation and business communication for older children.

These are some types of writing skills that would help in developing strong writing skills among the children

Also, enclosed herewith are some of the exercises to improve writing skills

· Encourage children to read regularly as reading would help in developing creative writing skills
· Motivate them to write a diary as it is a great exercise for improving writing skills
· Ask them to create a short story based on a random sentence taken from a book or other piece of writing

It takes time and sincere efforts to hone and polish writing skills. The young learners must be encouraged to keep trying, reading and questioning things around them. That’s the secret to developing good writing skills among children. At Genesis Global School, we aim to promote and nurture the creative writing skills of the children and enhance their overall personality.