We think of reading and math as key academic skills to sharpen through the summer months, but writing is just as important! Writing requires your brain to incorporate every single cognitive skill—which is one reason why it’s such a challenge for many students.
Cognitive Skills & Writing
As we said above, writing uses every cognitive skill in your brain. Here’s how…
- Your brain needs to be engaged and paying attention to the task, ignoring distractions, sustaining focus until the task is complete, and keeping track of where you are.
- You need strong working memory to keep up with what you’re trying to write, remember where you are in the word or sentence, and juggle motor coordination and language skills.
- Processing speed is essential for writing to become fluid and natural, rather than struggling over every letter, word, or phrase.
- You need auditory processing to “hear” the words you’re writing and encode them correctly in letters and words.
- Visual processing is essential for staying on the right line on the page, forming letters correctly, recognizing spelling mistakes in words, and envisioning the scenario you’re writing about.
- You need to reason and problem-solve to figure out the best order to write events, as well as using logic to apply correct spelling rules for any given word.
- Finally, you need strong long-term memory to correctly represent facts in what you’re writing and remember spelling, grammar, or writing rules.
As you can see, writing is a fantastic exercise for each of these core cognitive skills. Especially during the summer months, it’s a great activity to engage these skills and “exercise” them during the break from school!
Read more: Why Kids Get Stuck + Ways to Foster Academic Resilience >>
Executive Functioning Skills & Writing
Beyond cognitive skills, though, writing is also a great exercise for building executive functioning skills. These are the skills that govern your ability to plan, organize, and achieve goals. Writing is a great exercise for many of these skill areas, including:
- Initiation – the ability to get started on a task and avoid procrastination.
- Shifting – easily switching between tasks or picking up where you left off.
- Planning and organization – putting thoughts in a logical order and writing cohesive sentences.
- Emotional and impulse control – staying engaged, ignoring distractions, and creating systems to avoid feelings of overwhelm and frustration.
- Self-monitoring – catching mistakes as you go through.
How to Help Your Child Progress and Enjoy the Process
If any of these skills are an area of struggle for your child, they likely will avoid writing or not enjoy it. So what can you do to make it more fun?
#1: Start Small.
See what your child can do on their own, and build from there. That may be one sentence—so start with that and gradually encourage them to expand what they’re able to do.
#2: Make It Relevant.
Encourage them to write for fun about things that they’re interested in. This can be a summer journal where they record memories, a summary of their favorite movie, or a fun “What if…” prompt that gets them to think outside the box.
#3: Be Consistent.
If your child doesn’t enjoy writing, they’ll likely avoid it at all costs, but if it’s just part of the routine, it’ll become more natural as time goes on. Build in journaling time into your daily schedule so they can know what to expect and maybe even start to think about what they’re going to write before the time comes!
