How Encouraging Students to Write Contributes To Their Success

Haydee B. Roque

When we think about the skills most important to develop in young children, a love of reading and writing are always at the forefront. A child with a book or pencil in her hands is a child with a bright future in front of her.

Reading and writing may be looked at as fundamental skills within the classroom, but their use remains essential long after one’s formal education comes to an end. Living in the digital age has made literacy even more important, as communicating professionally through writing is an important skill in most workplaces.

At a time when professionals spend one third of their time reading and writing emails, written communication is more important than ever before for success in academics and beyond. The earlier in life writing skills are developed, the stronger these skills will be in the long run, highlighting the importance of writing in elementary school.

While there are countless benefits to having strong writing skills, the benefit of teaching students these skills from an early age are mostly on academic success across the curriculum. Many studies suggest that students who are able to master writing skills early on struggle less in overall literacy and communicating.

Increased writing instruction that focuses not merely on penmanship, but on writing strategies, planning, and organization, can benefit students for the rest of their lives. Even prior to this, increased confidence with writing skills can help students to be more effective in communicating their understanding of learning standards, allowing students to better demonstrate their knowledge across the curriculum and to express their concerns and questions in a way to help further their personal understanding.

Moreover, students who learn to write a complete sentence at a young age are more likely to apply that knowledge and develop that skill into writing complete paragraphs as they age. Mastering writing at an early age is associated with higher outcomes on standardized testing and overall performance in school.

Aside from simply helping students to write their letters and learn their name, students at this earliest level of elementary education ought to be learning how to plan their writing by picking ideas, organizing their notes into a logical sequences, and then being able to take that idea and write it down with detail and elaboration so they can convey their concept via written communication.

As students age, the outlining of events, the quality of detail, and eventually the strategies that they use to develop a sentence and convey their ideas should also develop, so that by the time they are graduating and entering the workforce, they are able to convey their meaning and ideas competently and accurately to potential employers. A great reason to start encouraging them to write as early as now.

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The author is Teacher I at Talba Elementary School