Parents as Writers 
  

Invite parents (grandparents, aunts and uncles, or other interested adults) who attend a “back-to-school” night or Open House early in the year to begin to learn about writing instruction by asking them to write or talk about their own experiences in writing.  You might ask them to try one or more of these prompts:

• What do you write in your everyday life—both for work and at home? (It could be shopping lists, notes to children, poems, reports, etc.)  What do you do when you approach a writing task? Is it the same for a grocery list as it is for a note to a teacher?  What different approaches or strategies do you use to produce different kinds of writing?
• What is your strongest memory of school writing when you were in elementary school?  [Or insert here whatever grade level is appropriate to your teaching.]  Do you remember specific assignments?  What the classroom looked like, felt like when you were writing?  Is the memory positive or negative?  Why do you think that memory stands out?
• Create a literacy life map:  Using symbols, stick figures, and other simple drawings, create a visual map of your journey as a writer.  Try to identify some important milestones in your growth as a writer.  What did you do early in your life?  In later years?
• Homework assignment for parents from Back to School Night:  Help the class create an “Everyday Writing” bulletin board.  First, ask parents to join their children in a scavenger hunt around the house, searching for examples of written literacy.  Next, ask children and parents send to school some examples of the writing they do every day which you can post on a bulletin board. 

As the year progresses, continue adding examples to the board.