How to help your kid write stories (and keep a journal)

Kids are natural storytellers. Ask an 8-year-old about their dream last night and you'll get ten minutes of dragons, plot twists and "and then, and then, and then." The challenge is getting that onto paper with a shape: a beginning, a middle and an end.

What helps kids write

The U.S. Institute of Education Sciences' guide on teaching elementary writing makes four recommendations. The one with the strongest evidence is to teach children to use the writing process, the steps of planning, writing, and then improving a piece, for a variety of purposes. The guide also recommends daily time to write and building a community of writers who share their work.

Reading and writing stories feed each other. The same institute's reading-comprehension guide recommends teaching children the parts of a story, so they can understand and remember what they read. Knowing those parts helps kids build their own stories too.

The CDC notes that children 6 to 8 are learning better ways to describe experiences and talk about thoughts and feelings, the raw material of stories.

Skill 1: A half-page story with a beginning, middle and end

1. Pick a character and a place.
2. Beginning: who they are and where they are.
3. Middle: a problem gets in the way.
4. End: how the problem gets solved.

The secret ingredient is the problem. A story where nothing goes wrong ("I went to the beach. It was fun. I went home.") isn't really a story yet. A story where the sandcastle keeps getting knocked down by a sneaky crab? Now we're talking.

Plan first. Before writing, sketch three boxes: Beginning, Middle, End. Draw or jot a few words in each. That's the planning step of the writing process, and it keeps the story from wandering.

Story starters if they're stuck:

• A kid finds a door in the back of their closet that wasn't there yesterday.
• The family dog can suddenly talk, but only to one person.
• It's the last day of summer, and something is missing.

Skill 2: Keep a weekly journal

1. Pick a day each week.
2. Write about your week, any way you like.
3. Keep it private. Your journal is yours.
4. Tap done when you've written it.

Journaling is daily-writing practice with no pressure. It can be a list, a drawing with captions, a rant about a bad day or a poem.

Respect the privacy. A journal only works if the writer trusts it won't be read. Don't read it without asking, and don't correct it. If your child wants to share an entry, that's a gift.

The challenge: read a story at family night

The mastery goal is to write a story and read it aloud at family night.

1. Write your story, start to end.
2. Read it to yourself and fix mistakes.
3. Practice reading it out loud.
4. Read it to your family.

Steps 2 and 3 are revising and editing, the "improving" part of the writing process. Reading your own work out loud is one of the best ways to catch a missing word or a confusing sentence.

Make the family audience a good one. Clap. Ask questions. Tell them your favorite part. A warm audience is what turns a kid into a writer. That's the "community of writers" the writing guide recommends, at home.

Coaching tips

• Ideas first, spelling later. When a child is drafting, let the story flow. Fix spelling in the editing step, not mid-sentence.
• Ask, don't fix. "What does the crab look like?" gets more description than "Add more detail."
• Type or write? Both work. The writing guide recommends helping kids become fluent with both handwriting and typing.
• Read great stories. Kids who read a lot borrow structures, words and ideas. (More in chapter books.)

Make it a quest

In Family Quests, this is the Storyteller skill. Practice quests are write a half-page story with a beginning, middle and end and keep a weekly journal entry, and the mastery quest is write a story and read it aloud at family night. The journal quest is tap-only: your child just taps "done," and the journal never gets photographed or uploaded. Start free.

Next: teach your kid to write clear instructions, or go back to kind notes and thank-yous.