A Writing Tip for Every Year: Second Grade
Second Grade: Pen for your student for as long as necessary.
Children often think they cannot write because they do not have the penning skills to compose sentences or paragraphs or the spelling skills to spell the words they want to use. Right off the bat, the young child grows to dislike writing. He feels inadequate (and thus, the many “I don’t know how to write” or “I’m bad at writing” mentalities of this age group).
Usually a child’s creativity and thinking processes are way above their small motor and spelling skills. That is, a child can think (and orally compose) way above what he can write (spelling-wise and writing mechanics-wise) or spell (encoding; just because a child can “decode”—sound out words—does not mean he can ‘’encode”—spell the words). This is where penning for your student (especially for dyslexic/dysgraphic ones and/or “late bloomers”) makes the difference between your child seeing himself as a writer or as a student who is “behind.”
