Teaching Writing

Sometimes children with language and/or learning disabilities struggle with writing activities. Often, this is due to the lack of previous oral experience. Children need lots of experience orally before putting their thoughts and ideas to print. Play lots of games orally first and keep these oral activities enjoyable.

Types of Oral Activities that Will Support Writing:

1. Expand my sentence. For this activity, you start with a basic sentence and take turns expanding the sentence.

For instance:
Person 1: "I have a dog."
Person 2: "I have a big dog."
Person 1: "I have a big black dog."
Person 2"I have a big, black dog named Dodger."
Person 1"I have a big, black dog named Dodger who loves people.

2. Another activity that can be done orally is to take any object or item and tell as much about it as possible.

For instance: Dogs are friendly. Dogs are furry. Dogs like to eat bones. Dogs can really hear well. (When the child exhausts everything they know, you move to a different object/item or topic)

3. To help children understand the 4 types of sentences, you will want to help them understand what they are:

• Declarative, which makes a statment:
  Close the door.
• Imperative, which expresses a command:
  Finish eating your dinner.
• Interrogative, which asks a question:
  Would you like to go to the park?
• Exclamatory, which makes an exclamation:
  That roller coaster ride was really scary!

  Take turns orally making sentences while the other states what type of sentence it is, or give the type of sentence and get the child to come up with that type of sentence. However, keep the oral language fun and as the child progresses, written language is the next logical step.