Use this structured step-by-step approach to help your child or teen better express her creative thoughts and ideas in writing. Beginning at the sentence level, help her write to describe, inform, explain, request, demand, amuse, and convince.
First, help your child understand basic sentence structure.
A basic sentence has two things.
A noun: boy
A verb: runs
Put these together and you have a basic sentence: The boy runs.
Help your student start to make her sentences more interesting by asking questions.
First, ask questions about the noun.
How many? The two boys run.
What kind? The excited, cheerful boy runs.
Which one? The red-headed boy in the blue shirt runs.
Which one? Michael runs.
Next, ask questions about the verb or action.
How? The boy runs quickly.
When? The boy runs quickly today.
Where? The boy runs quickly to the candy shop.
Why? The boy runs to the candy shop to meet his friends.
When? First, the boy ran to the candy shop every day. Now, he runs every day because he needs exercise.
Finally, keep asking questions and adding modifiers to the sentence until she has a more colorful and descriptive sentence.
The cheerful boy in the blue striped shirt sprints quickly across the busy street to the new candy shop to eat chocolate fudge with his friends.
Next, show her how write different types of sentences.
To make a statement: The boy runs every day.
To ask a question: Why does the boy run every day?
To show excitement: The boy runs every day to get ice cream!
Show her how to move parts of sentences around and keep the same meaning.
The boy runs every day to the ice cream store.
The boy runs to the ice cream store every day.
Every day, the boy runs to the ice cream store.
Next, show her how varying the action can make her sentences more interesting.
The thesaurus or “synonyms” function built into word processing software can help your student with this task.
The boy sprints.
The boy scampers.
Continue to use synonyms to create more interesting sentences.
The jovial lad in the blue striped shirt sprints hurriedly across the harried city street to the newly-opened candy shop to devour chocolate fudge with his friends.
Finally, show your student how to combine several sentences into a compound or complex sentence.
Teach your child to combine basic sentences into a more vivid and interesting compound or complex sentence.
The boy runs every day.
He runs with his friends.
They go to the ice cream store.
The boy is happy.
Can become:
The happy boy sprints to the ice cream store every day with his friends.
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(c) 2010 – 2019, Monte W. Davenport, Ph.D.
