Essay Writing-Monkey Boy Style

Dominique Parenting Views Essay writing

Monkey boy is current in his last week of vacations. It’s time to slowly engage him back into study mode and for him to catch up on his holiday homework.

During our recent vacation to Penang, Malaysia Monkey boy wrote and essay about his trip. (Scanned in above).  I’m still working with him on how to improve his essay writing skills as it does need a lot of polishing.

Here are 10 tips on how to build up essay writing skills with your kids.

1. Do not be critical about spelling as it will stifle their flow of thought.

   This is especially for beginning writers like Monkey boy. He still has quite limited vocabulary and is not really apt in his dictionary checking skills. Having a few misspelling is acceptable.

2. Give scaffolding.
   It’s important that the child knows the proper structure in constructing an essay.  In the above example Monkey boy was made to recollect and walk though the experiences that he had through the week in chronological order.
3. The 4 “W”s and 1 H
   What, Which, Why, Where and How? These are the starters which I use to get Money boy’s creative juices flowing. They also help him to organize his thoughts before penning them down in the essay.
4. It’s all in Past Tense.
   As in this instance of a recollection all has to be written in the past tense. Many a times kids forget and start writing using the wrong tense as they simple relate word for word what they have just spoken and use the present tense instead.
5. Describe and do it a lot!
   One of the main key point I look out when I mark an essay is that it has relevant descriptions which help to give more depth into the story told. I’m slowly building up this aspect  in cultivating his essay writing skills.
6. It needs to make sense.
   Monkey boy tends to get sidetracked when he is planning his draft during an essay writing session.  Sometimes he would put in aliens and even action words which they use. I have to remind him that he has to keep his focus on the topic and genre chosen for the essay or else he maybe marked out of point for unrelated ” creative additions” to the essay.  It’s fine to write about aliens if the essay if about my imagination or creatures from outer space but not about a recollection about your holidays.
7. Keep your sentences to the point.
   Brevity is better then being long winded. Having extremely long sentences sometimes may make one write out of point or even make the marker miss the key points. It also makes it hard to recognize the focus of the essay as the words “waffle” around too much making the essay less then outstanding.
8. Write legibly.
   As a teacher what I can’t stand is really illegible writing. It’s bad enough that we have to mark stacks of essays per week. I don’t need to play a guessing game each time I read what you write. I’m constantly reminding Monkey boy to write clearly or he risks being marked wrong if his teachers are unable to decipher what he wrote.
9. Check and check again.
   Checking through one’s work does mean just visually scanning through from the start to the end of the document. For essay checking I will make  Monkey boy read out the essay to me line by line. I will next ask him if what he reads makes sense to him and if he understood what he was reading out. If he doesn’t really understand or I feel that there are some missing links I will get him to add in the missing parts.
10. Practice makes Perfect.
    The only way to get better is through writing.  I’ll  be getting Monkey boy to do more essay writing and on the various genres so that he will get accustomed to writing and words will start flowing more smoothly from his pencil.

How do you get you kids to write essays?