Developing a Concept for Composition Writing

1. Encourage your child to read. Provide children with opportunities to read quality children's literature.

2. Have your child retell what she's read instead of having her answer specific questions about a story. Answering questions usually only requires the child to say a few words. Retelling the story requires the child to generate more language and organize their ideas. Use information provided by the child in the retelling to construct probe questions. After the retelling is completed, you may ask questions about important aspects of the story that haven't been included in the retelling.

3. Implement a variation of the Scrambled Story strategy. Select an unfamiliar story with a traditional beginning, middle, and ending. Divide the story between paragraphs into four sections. Remove all evidence of the title and page numbers. Pictures may be included if desired. Shuffle the order of the story pieces and place in a clasp envelope labeled with the story title and author's name. Have your child read the title of the story (that is printed on their story envelope). Tell him to read each section silently and try to find the beginning and ending sections of the story. Then have him read the other sections and put them in order. When the child thinks that he has sequenced the sections appropriately, have him reread the story silently to check his work. He may rearrange story pieces as needed. When he has checked his work have him share the story with you. Probe to have your child analyze how he made his decisions. Highlight elements of story grammar in his explanations as appropriate. Keep in mind that this differs significantly from the traditional sequencing events activity. When sequencing events, children have previously read the entire story; they are simply using a literal level of comprehension to put the events in order. The Scrambled Story strategy provides a child with pieces of an unfamiliar story and requires him/her to use higher level thinking and story grammar to determine how the story fits together.

4. Implement the Macro Cloze strategy. Select an unfamiliar story with a traditional beginning, middle, and ending. Read the story and select one or two paragraphs (in different places in the story) that are predictable considering the text that leads up to the paragraph and the text that follows the paragraph. Prepare the story so that this/these paragraph(s) are omitted. Leave plenty of space for your child to write what they think happened in each spot. Implementation: Have her read the story silently and write her own paragraph for each "spot." Have her read the story to you inserting what she wrote in each "spot." If your child wishes, you may share the actual paragraphs that you had deleted from the story. Children often like to compare their paragraphs to the original paragraphs that the author wrote. This strategy involves children in meaningful silent reading, strengthens story grammars, and provides children with an opportunity to write in relation to reading.