Tools to Inspire the Reluctant Writer

In an excellent recent article in Education Week, elementary school teacher Emily Galle-From discussed the enjoyment she got from teaching young children about writing. By encouraging her students to let their imaginations soar, to exercise their creativity, and to use a variety of ways to convey their stories - prose, poetry, correspondence, and artwork - her  students were able to express heartfelt thoughts and process complex feelings in ways that were meaningful to them.

Here at The Yellin Center, we know that many students find writing difficult. The reasons for this vary. Some students have trouble organizing their thoughts. Others find putting pen or pencil to paper - or keyboarding - problematic due to graphomotor or fine motor difficulties. Other students struggle with word finding or even reading their own work. Not surprisingly, when children find writing difficult, they are reluctant to write. However, the best way to become a better writer is to write.

We often recommend tools to help even the most reluctant writers to create and share their stories. These include:

• Comic Creator, a website that allows students to create their own comic strips using pre-made images and speech bubbles. This writing format will allow children to express themselves outside the confines of traditional academic writing tasks and greatly reduces the amount of writing required to get their ideas out. It includes a variety of lesson tools for teachers of different grades.
  

• Storybird, a free writing platform for creating and writing visual stories. This program is especially valuable for students with strong spatial skills as it includes high quality, artist-created images that young writers can use for inspiration.
  

• StoryBoardThat, a storyboard platform that helps students develop visual literacy and presentation skills.

• StoryJumper , a storybook creation platform where children can create, publish, narrate, and collaborate with friends to create a unique story.

We hope that one or more of these tools can be helpful to a reluctant writer you may know.