Smart Creative Writing Strategies For Kids in Singapore

June 22, 2017

Creative writing in Singapore is an elusive concept to parents who were not part of the relatively newer education system. As a result, anxious parents scurry to enrol their toddlers in enrichment classes to give their children a head start in their early education. With so many creative writing classes sprouting in Singapore, it is common for its very concept to elude us.

But fear not – to fuel your child’s foray into forming creative phrases in writing, Gloria Goh, Assistant Director Curriculum & Training, MindChamps Reading & Writing, recommends smart strategies, such as The Art of Effective Description, The Use of ‘Feeling’ Words, Difference in Perspective as well as Figurative Language.

 

Related: Top 5 Worth-It Enrichment Classes for Kids in Singapore

 

These strategies help your child grasp concepts that would allow him or her to add detail through metaphors and word associations, as well as to put them into somebody’s shoes. Another great tip students pick up is how to effective describe how they feel through certain words and sentence structures.

For instance, here are three remarkable phrases from students, shared by Ms Goh:

  1. When you are given a homework task by a teacher, do you sometimes feel confused or bored or overworked? Most students feel this way from time to time….
  2. “Bam!” the floodlight filled up the room blinding me. I heard a voice calling out to me, “Victor! Welcome back. We thought we’d lost you there for a moment.”
  3. I remembered going out to the balcony and as I touched the metal gate, a strike of lightning hit me. That must be how I died!

 

Creative Writing Can Be Cultivated in Singapore

 

An acute sense for creativity in writing can also be cultivated from a young age in Singapore. Parents can help develop enthusiasm from writing by encouraging their children to keep a writing journal, writing two pages a week. This helps encourage their champs to write freely about anything that interests them.

Says Ms Goh, “This ‘free-writing’ is not to be analysed and corrected, but read by the child to you and shared with others. In time, we hope that this will encourage them to write more than two pages and fill up many personal journals (or they could use your tablet to type on!”

‘Free-writing’, as its name suggests, is an expression of the child’s creative freedom, and the more he/she is willing and eager to share their writing with you – and with others – the more they will enjoy the experience and be drawn back to the page.

Further reading: How To Raise A Child Who Loves to Read

 

Strategies for Creative Writing

 

Ms Goh also tells us more about the MindChamps Writing™ Programme, which greatly aids in the development of techniques for composition writing. It does not interfere or have overlaps with the MOE English curriculum. According to Ms Goh, it ‘focuses on 3 important components of the 3 Minds’.

  • The Champion Mind – Celebrating the individual’s uniqueness, going beyond conventional wisdom and overcoming adversity to achieve success.
  • The Learning Mind – Learning How to Learn strategies that actively assist our learner to understand, store, recall and synthesise information and concepts.
  • The Creative Mind – Connecting multiple perspectives and integrating them to generate new, creative ideas.

These tools are from a set of 21 tools for writing is incorporated into the MindChamps Writing™ Programme, and are part of a process that helps young writers along with language enhancement, planning and structuring their compositions, as well as in story-building. It is through this that they gain critical and analytical thinking skills.

The programme is designed to work hand in hand with what the child is learning at school. It focuses on the understanding and creative writing Singapore aspects of writing, rather than attempting to force a mechanical approach before the child has internalised the all-important desire to write. Ms Goh says,

“At MindChamps Reading & Writing Programmes, we discourage rote learning as the child will not be able to thoroughly understand “What is learning all about?” Hence, our programmes are delivered through innovative methods.”

She adds that MindChamps Reading & Writing Programmes has found that for a child to learn best, the 3 Minds – Learning, Champion and Creative Mind come into play.

During the programme, an emphasis is placed on immersing the child’s imagination, before facilitating writing from that immersion. Furthermore, it provides the grammatical structures to allow for better expression of the child’s ideas.

To hear what parents have to say, check out MindChamps Reading & Writing Reviews.

Want to find out how well your child writes? MindChamps Literacy Assessment is one of the world’s most comprehensive and accurate measures of a child’s reading and writing ability. Backed by International Early Childhood Literacy experts, the MindChamps Literacy Assessment provides a clear profile of your child’s ability.

 

Book a complimentary Literacy Assessment for your child now!