Here are some writing tips that parents can use throughout the year from Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory writing-assessment experts. Let your child see that you enjoy writing, and that it is an important skill for everyday life. I'm not sure I spelled this right. Pen pals can be fun, and notes to relatives are treasured. There's no need to get in a frazzle about commas and semicolons and where to put the darn things.
Good writers think of punctuation marks as traffic signals at an intersection.
They keep ideas from crashing into each other, or to prevent the reader from getting into the wrong lane. Writing well is important to your child's adult future, but that's not the most important reason to encourage your child to write. For now, your child's job is learning , and an important reason for kids to write is that it helps them to think and to learn. This column is provided as a public service by the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, a nonprofit institution working with schools and communities in Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington.