From Ordinary To Extraordinary!

That s what we all want for our children and their learning. And that can be a lot easier than it seems, at least when it comes to their writing!

This time of year can seem pretty dull, as the nights draw in, the mornings get cold and dark and nature waves us all goodbye for another season. Luckily, though, autumn is a great time to stretch those writing muscles and flex your child s imagination by turning the ordinary extraordinary- and their writing talents into the bargain

Follow the Signature Tuition Top 3 Tips to support your child s literacy this autumn.

1. Treading in those crisp, orange-red autumnal leaves? Why not gather up a handful and use them as the focus for some brilliant imaginative writing? Glue them in a journaling-book and encourage your child to write a diary on their autumnal adventures (cleverly supporting their non-fiction literacy development) as well as providing a keep-sake for the future. Alternatively use a walk out on a crisp (or soggy!) morning as a starting point for a piece of rich descri ptive story-writing about the Perfect / Worst Autumn Day .

2. Ask your child to pick the dullest thing in the garden and make it exciting! This can turn a table into a time-machine, a leafless tree into a secret door into an unknown other world, or a dropped apple into a powerful, world-changing fruit. The possibilities are endless when it comes to putting these ideas into writing, and invaluable in supporting your child s confidence in telling their own stories.

3. Poetry. Ask your child to really focus on the nature they see around them. Ask them to compare it to more regular objects and items. Then ask them to imagine what those items would do if they were a person. For example, a bare branch may become beckoning arms begging for help a cloud-filled sky may become a body of gloom crying in despair. Using comparison like this and putting it all together can often result in some very powerful poetry work (and it doesn t have to rhyme!).

Happy Imagineering!