Literacy, or the ability to read and write, is one of the greatest gifts
you can give a person. Though the skills are many and take time and
practice to master, they will open up countless opportunities across a
lifetime. These opportunities can then improve the lives of the next
generation, greatly impacting and improving communities. Reading and
writing also brings joy to many people. If you would like to encourage
literacy skills in the lives of people around you, here are some helpful
ideas.
Build on earlier skills. Just because your students should have learned basic grammar or spelling when they were younger does not mean that those skills should be neglected now. Continue to build on and maintain skills like grammar, spelling, parts of speech, voice, tense and writing style. This will keep their skills sharp, as well as helping any students who may have fallen through the cracks.
Encourage creativity. By this older stage, many people will have a reduced capacity for creativity. Creative thinking skills, however, lead people to be better problem solvers and innovators, so such skills should be fostered in any way possible. Writing is one of the best opportunities for students to bring creativity into their academics. Encourage them to take new approaches to assignments and methods of reading.
Emphasize critical thinking. During this time in their lives, children should be developing the skills necessary to prepare them for higher learning. This will ensure that they have the most opportunities possible. An absolutely necessary skill for higher education, as well as a vital life skill, is critical thinking. Encourage your students to really think about the things they are reading and writing. This will prepare them to do everything from analyze news stories to participating fully in the political process.
- Have your students ask questions about what they are reading. Who wrote this book? Why did they write it? Who did they write it for? What impact did the environment around them have on the text? There are many questions like these which can serve to illuminate information hidden within the things they read.
- Have your students ask questions about their own writing. Why did I choose this voice? Why do I have the opinion I've expressed? Why is this something I care about? What would I rather be writing? These kinds of questions can lead your students to learn a lot about themselves but it will also help them make more conscious decisions about the things they write.
Prepare for real, academic writing. If you want your students to have a real opportunity at getting a higher education, they will need to be able to do the more complex types of writing which are common in colleges, universities, and training programs. This means employing argumentative skills, expressing themselves clearly, using logic, and following proper formats. Give them opportunities to practice these skills while pursuing topics that interest them.
Encourage reading. We often become better writers by reading excellent examples of the craft. Get your teens reading well written, classic literature. Give them books in widely varying styles so that they can see differences in voice, description and word choice. They should be given older works which remain classic, in order to see why certain techniques are timeless and hold wide appeal. They should also read newer material, so that they have solid models to build on for their own writing.
- This will have the added benefit of often expanding a student’s vocabulary. Encourage them to look up any word they don’t know. This will help give them the adult vocabulary which is often a mark of a good education, which will help them exponentially in further academic and professional environments.
Teach careful word choice. Many inexperienced writers will often use far more or far fewer words than they need to. Guide them until they learn to balance description, dialogue, detail and information. This is a very difficult skill to learn and will take time as well as a great deal of practice.
- Get overly wordy writers to learn what should be included and what is just overkill. This will often be a wealth of adjectives or repetitive sentences. Show them how to weed out extras and get their sentences down to the basics.
- A smaller portion of writers will have a hard time getting descriptive and specific enough. Teach them to remove themselves and approach their writing with a list of requirements. Could this be understood by someone entirely new to the subject? Could someone come to a specific page and be able to follow along? Give them exercises, such as having to write an entire page describing an apple, to improve their skills.
Develop handwriting skills. An important skill for teens to develop is adult-level handwriting. While rounded, uneven characters with childish shapes are acceptable for beginning students, teens will want to develop a more “adult” appearance to their handwriting if they want to be taken seriously in future academic and professional endeavors.
- Give teens lots of opportunity to practice their handwriting. Most assignments are typed these days and this removes a student’s chance to improve their handwriting. Require shorter assignments to be handwritten or find other ways for them to spend time improving their skills.
- Encourage legibility, even lettering, and clean lines. The writing doesn’t need to be in cursive in order to look adult and professional, it simply needs to be precise. When teens excel at this, reward them. If they struggle, show them what needs to be improved and give them opportunity to fix mistakes.
- Give handwriting exercises as minor extra credit. Repeated lines of the same letter will give students great practice and allow them to easily see improvements and become acquainted with appropriate gestures.
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