We’ve prepared for all parents 4 easy-to-follow tips to guide your child with writing practices. As we all know, practice makes perfect, but how do you get a child to practise during the holidays? Perhaps you might want to consider signing your child up for the National Writing Competition (for P3s and P4s) 2018. The following tips would definitely be helpful for them to enjoy writing a composition as a submission!
1. Plan
Benjamin Franklin once said, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” Following the simple 5-step strategy of a “Story Mountain”, children could plan their compositions with a structure that tells a complete story. The story would start with an orientation, which sets the story and tells the reader where the story takes place and the main characters involved. The story would soon progress with a complication, where the main character would face a problem or challenge. The action then rises and results in a climax, followed by a subsiding of action, or “falling action”. As the characters learn from their experiences, the story then closes with a resolution.
2. Show, Not Tell
Children taking the Creative Writer’s Toolbox programme at Mind Stretcher would be all too familiar with this strategy. Equipped with creative phrases, children are able to illustrate their stories vividly with apt vocabulary – to “show” and not “tell” the emotions, actions and plot. Children are taught how to give as rich a description as possible. A rich description in compositions go a long way in engaging the reader, and thus scoring more marks!
3. Use of good vocabulary
Good vocabulary goes a long way and distinguishes the good from the excellent. Although reading is the best way for children to pick up good phrases and vocabulary in context, not all children have the habit of reading. Thus, providing them with short stories, or reading together with them, might just do the trick! Pay more attention and highlight useful vocabulary with your child, and they would probably remember to use it!
4. Read and review
On top of their dread for writing, children have immense abhorrence for checking their work. This might prove to be their downfall as they might have made avoidable mistakes when writing their compositions in tests and exams. The most common mistakes encountered by teachers when marking PSLE scripts are grammar errors in Subject-Verb Agreement and Tenses. Remind your child of the importance of checking their work before submission, and you might help save them some marks!
Mind Stretcher’s National Writing Competition (for P3s and P4s) 2018
If your child is in Primary 3 or 4, and loves writing, he should participate in our writing competition. The Mind Stretcher National Writing Competition 2018 is now open for entries till 15 June 2018. The competition is for children studying in Primary 3 and 4 this year. More than $5,200 worth of prizes are up for grabs for the winners of this competition. Winning entries will also be published in our upcoming anthology “Best A* Model Compositions.” More details, including the composition questions, are available here. Good luck & have fun!
