we are looking to help our DD in writing. We feel we are not helping her much in that part. She is otherwise doing well in her school. I heard about private tutors and after school institutions etc. Just want to know your experiences and cost involved. we are looking for once a week for an hour or so....
appreciate your suggestions
thanks

Is it the physical act of writing that she needs help with, or some aspect of composition or what? If it's the physical handwriting side our experiences with DS-now-8 may be relevant. I've written about them somewhere here but not putting my hand on the post, will edit it in for detail later perhaps... but in brief:

- he's always disliked and been slow at handwriting (though neatness has been age-OK)

- this came to a head last summer, because he was worried about going into a new year that would have higher expectations for amount of writing produced

- so we set up a system of daily practice for him in which he'd write out the same thing (it was a list of English monarchs and their dates!) every day, against the stopwatch, and try to improve his time

- we gave him the odd pointer, e.g. "shake your hand before you start to get it relaxed", "use this softer pencil and don't press so hard" but mostly left it to him

- he did improve his time and felt better about starting the school year

- his new teacher involved the special education teacher because his writing clearly is behind his other work; she takes him out for sessions of a few minutes once a week or so, and gives him tips such as extra joins he can do, but it's all very low key

- this term he has started to talk about how much he likes writing stories! He's still a bit slow but he's improving and no longer stressed about it.

Sorry I was not clear in my previous post
She has no issues with handwriting or motivation
She needs guidance in how to approach a topic
She is in 2nd grade at advanced level in school

Ah, I see - then I have no relevant experience, sorry; DS doesn't seem to have difficulties there.

Sorry again DD did not have any difficulties in that part as well. She is 6 and in 2nd grade. Advanced in her writing as well
Last week she was dictating me a story about a duck and after every 4-5 lines she reread and continued her story. She directed what type of picture needed for each of her children' book. She did it for 2 consecutive days and dictated about 25 pages book. (assume 5 lines per page). Overall it was about a mother teaching a baby what to do and what not to do and kinda mom and daughter relations. She also told me what type of illustrations needed for each page. We need some help to nurture her talent.......

That's lovely! It sounds to me as though you're already nurturing her talent by e.g. making yourself available to take dictation - but maybe someone else will have further suggestions for you.

It is not the content ( though her book looked like copied concepts from 4-5 books she read about in her preschool and not read recently, the way she approached and what illustrations she wanted for each Page really surprised me.
Hence this post..... So back to my original question (required lot of explanation)

I have twin DDs just finished year1. They write approximately 500 word compositions. They write stories, factual reports, retells, recipes, persuasive arguments, diary inserts and letters. In my experience, assistance in writing needs practise practise practise and each time spend equal amount of time on review and correction. The problem at school is often the lack of specific feedback to enable improvements (understandable given the teacher has a whole class), at home I often rewrite with improvements for them, provide alternative wording, show the addition of description, revise punctuation, show alternate endings etcetc. Typing and the use of basic editing on the computer can also help them a lot. Challenge them by setting tasks like "write a story about a monkey without using a letter m anywhere in your story-->this way they are forced to choose alternative text and description instead of old habits like "once upon a time there was a monkey". Make everyday actitivites a writing task--> if you can write me a persuasive argument on why I should give you icecream instead of fruit for dinner then you can have it. At the same time write a response yourself on the opposing view so they can see structure, tactic, approach etc. for an advanced year 2 girl I'd think you'd be wasting your time on a tutor when all that is needed is practise and correction.

Good luck

I never wrote anything and never required as well
There lies the problem I do not have time to learn that now as well

Creating opportunities for your daughter to run wild with her imagination and to create stories in her head are two powerful tools in helping her develop skills for writing.

One of my favorite things to do - as a kid and to this day - is look at strangers in the mall, the park, walking past our house, in the airport and make up a story about them. I've done this wih my kids since they were little, starting with a dog we see wandering past our house or an empty swing gliding back and forth in the breeze. The reason this will help your daughter is because it sparks her imagination and helps her learn to formulate stories in her head (where most writers "write" before the words show up in printed form). The more fanciful and ridiculous the story, the more kids will chime in and help tell it.

If creativity doesn't come naturally to you, start by asking questions. "I wonder where that dog's owner is. Maybe he was too tired to get up and asked the dog to go to Starbucks and bring him back some coffee. Wouldn't that be fun if dogs could do our errands like that?"

Read out loud to her - even if she is quite capable of reading on her own. Hearing a story without working to read it allows us to expend more of our energy on creating the images in our mind. The Harry Potter series came out when my older kids were in midschool. They could've read to themselves quite easily, but I read the first in the series to them out loud. They're in college now and still say it was a wonderful experience. By me reading the story aloud, the kids could focus on creating the story in their own imagination, a launching step to creating their own story and world in their head,

And i second everything master of none said.

Writing requires three things - the correct tools (grammar), a nurtured imagination, and practice.

After working for 12 years as a freelance writer and teaching others how to write articles, i'd have to say that the difference between good writers and excellent writers lies in their ability to create a world for the reader - even if it is only a sentence or two at the beginning of an article. That requires a nurtured imagination. Your daughter sounds like she's on her way to being a writer, so just creating opportunities to nurture that imagination will give her confidence and experience.

The Purdue OWL (online writing lab) has some great resources for teaching writing. They may be a little ahead of where she is right now, but there may be some sections that you could draw on now, and you might want to keep the rest bookmarked for future use.

I have some other specific tips on how to teach writing, but, alas, no time right now to post them. I'll try to get back in the next few days to put them up here.

You've gotten really wonderful advice in the other responses, and there's not much I can offer re actual writing tips, although I have so appreciated you having posted this as it's given me some great ideas for working with my own kids

The one tip I have that might be helpful - try to find out if there's a writer's group in your area. I'm not sure where you'd look, but fwiw I have a friend who is an author and loves writing. She belongs to a group of other authors who meet monthly informally to share their work, share tips about getting published etc. I imagine that through a similar group you might find someone to mentor your dd, and possibly a group she could join that might help her with tips/critique/inspiration.

Best wishes,

polarbear

A popular writing resource that I found online is called 6+1 traits of writing. It's a checklist for educators to be able to give specific constructive feedback for students to improve their paper.
http://www.middleweb.com/ReadWrkshp/RWdownld/MvaleRubric.pdf