The most common suggestion school teachers make on my students’ school report cards for improving writing skills is that they should write “more detail”.

Sometimes children find this difficult because the teacher has assigned a subject the child does not easily relate to. This is why I ensure that my students decide what they want to write about. Usually they have lots to say when they are enthusiastic about a topic. I also ensure that I get to really know the child—not just his interests and hobbies, but also the many facets of his personality and how he sees and relates to people and events in his life. Encouraging and validating his world point of view results in an enthusiasm to communicate.

Which brings me to another reason why students can be reluctant to add details to their writing: they don’t really see the point of writing in the first place. Once the understand that writing is just another form of talking and communicating with people and is an important and rewarding form of self-expression, the details start to flow.

Writers must also be keen observers—they need to notice life around them and their responses to it. Reading and writing ability is linked—improvement in one skill, also improves the other. Any writing class must also include reading. The more the child understands himself, the more he understands the wide variety of characters he encounters in his reading and will also be able to describe complexity in characters.

Noticing details in life (visual, auditory, tensile, taste) allows the student to automatically want to include them in a story—to paint a picture that is complete for the reader.

Writing should be a joyful activity for the child and I hope he would have an eagerness to express his thoughts, feelings, opinions and observations with humour, insight and truth.
Substitute she/her for your daughter