5 Tips for Teaching Creative Writing

When Writing is Too Boring

Teaching writing to a child who thinks that the act of writing his thoughts down is too time consuming and boring makes for struggle in the homeschool classroom. After all, not only is writing a requirement in our school districtbut it is essential to a well-rounded human. Isn’t it? But how do you teach creative writing in homeschool when it’s such a struggle? 

5 Tips for Teaching Creative Writing in Homeschool 

1. Stop making them hand write their thoughts and expressions.
2. Try allowing dictation. Let them tell you their stories, ideas and/or thoughts and you hand write exactly what they are saying. 
3. Illustration. Ask your student to illustrate a story. Let them draw the images that are in their mind. After they have completed an illustrated story booklet, have them tell you the story out loud. Then, ask them if they are willing to write the story in the booklet so others can read it. If not, ask them if they will help you to write it by re-telling the story. Re-telling and seeing it written out will help them to understand the process of “writing.” 
4. Let them type their story. Let’s face it, our children are growing up in the digital age. So let them explore that keyboard and learn to type in the process of creatively expressing their thoughts. (This option has worked wonders for my sons desire to participate in “writing”).
5. Set up the speech recognition software on your computer and allow your child to speak their story into a word processing software such as Microsoft Word or Notepad. Since the computer doesn’t automatically add in punctuation, the student either learns to speak those, or must manually go back in and add them.

Here’s How To Set Up Speech Recognition on a PC using Windows 7. 

How to Set Up Speech Recognition in Windows 10