HOW TO TEACH WRITING TO STRUGGLING STUDENTS (Budding writers, ELLs, Speech students, etc.)

HOW TO TEACH WRITING TO STRUGGLING STUDENTS (Budding writers, ELLs, Speech students, etc.)

• Hold students to the 5-word minimum in all sentences. Teacher must model this too!

• BE PATIENT! DO EVERYTHING for the kid in the beginning, MODEL ALL SPEAKING & WRITING as much as possible. Let student make mistakes and you edit their corrections, but don’t shame them for their errata!

• Use “pacing” system (eggs of different colors in a row, dots they touch as they say each word in a sentence, big dots they can stand on and jump from dot to dot, unifix blocks, etc.) so kids can be aware of all the words in a sentence. Up to now they’ve only wrote mostly one word, not a string of words.

• Use dictation! They speak, I write, they copy, or just read and can illustrate.

• Use graphic organizers and charts to organize information

• Use graphic organizers as a basis for composition.

• Use complete sentences in these organizers

• Start with non-fiction

• Instead of sentence starters or just fill-in-the-blanks with one blank, prepare sentences that make them think of the RELATIONSHIP between two words.

“The ________ is _____________” (student thinks of a noun, and an adjective/verb)