Encourage your child to get involved in the community and sharpen his writing skills by penning an editorial for the local paper. He’ll get to play reporter for a day as he writes persuasively about a local issue that concerns or interests him. This is a fun way to introduce your child to professional writing and the writing process as well as get him thinking about his community and the world around him.
The writing process involves 6 or more stages and is a good habit for kids, especially teens looking towards college, to get into. The six main stages are: prewriting, drafting, revising, rewriting, proofreading and publishing.
What You Need:
❑ Pencil
❑ Paper
❑ Computer and printer (for the final draft of the editorial)
❑ Internet access
What You Do:
- Encourage your child to read through several editorials in the local paper to get a feel for the style. What are his first impressions? Discuss persuasive writing techniques together, using the Internet for help if needed.
- Help your child brainstorm important, relevant topics that he could write an editorial about. Think about current events and recent news stories for inspiration.
- Once he’s settled on a topic, make him write an outline describing key points that he wants to make in his article. Starting with an outline will help him organize his thoughts and give him a better idea of what he wants his article to say.
- Once he’s finished his outline, ask him to write a rough draft of his article. Remind him that in rough drafts, it’s most important that he gets her ideas down on paper, not that he writes perfectly. He can easily rework the language and style of his article in the first revision.
- Read through his rough draft together. Give him pointers on how to improve the flow and structure of his article, and help his with any grammatical mistakes. Encourage him to revise him paper with your advice and his own changes in mind.
- Repeat step 5 until your child is happy with his article. Professional writers go through multiple revision stages before they reach their final draft. Encourage your child to make as many revisions as he needs!
- Together with your child, proofread his article one last time and make any final changes.
- Now he can type up the final copy of his editorial and send it off to the newspaper. Give your child a pat on the back for a job well done!
