Writing is an effective way to express your feelings, thoughts, and ideas. As teachers, it is our responsibility to help students enhance their reading and writing skills. Keeping this in mind, we at Ekya School, Byrathi have introduced some exercises to improve and develop the creative writing skills of our students. These writing exercises not only help students improve their writing skills but also give them an opportunity to showcase their creativity. The way students think, their understanding of a topic or a concept, their perception, all this reflects in their writing. But sometimes they are not able to express themselves on a piece of paper. That’s why we have to encourage our students to practice reading & writing. Writing doesn’t have to be an essay or a big paragraph, even 3-5 lines can help a child improve his writing skills. This doesn’t happen immediately but it is a gradual process. I encourage my students to read a lot in Hindi, which will help improve their vocabulary and help in enhancing their writing.
I am a Hindi Teacher and teach grades 5-9. In my classroom, I use various tools to improve my students’ writing skills. Tools that involve writing are immensely helpful. I try to assign brief writing exercises to my class. For example, in Grade 5, I used a tool popularly known as ‘K-W-L’. This tool requires the students to write what they know about a topic, what they want to know, and what they learned and my grade 5 students enjoyed doing this activity. It was not a lengthy piece of writing but only a few sentences. There are other tools too, like 3-2-1, that can involve writing.
Once I asked my students to imagine that they have won a lottery of Rs. 10,000/- and I asked them what they would do with the lottery money? Some wrote that they will buy things for themselves while the others wrote that they would donate that money to an orphanage. Well, a few of them wrote that they would give it to their parents. Students enjoyed writing down their ideas. The students felt happy as they were imagining winning a lottery, which helped them to write those wonderful answers with so much enthusiasm.
I did this same activity in Grade 9. One wrote that he would organize a music concert, while the other child wrote that he was saving the money for his college education. Another student wrote that they would invest the money for the future, while yet another child wrote that she would use it to travel.
In grade 8, we read a story and understood what it was about, then I asked students what was ‘the one thing’ in the story that they would want to change. After the discussion, I asked them to write this down. We called this writing activity – Twist in a tale! The students enjoyed doing it and then peer-reviewing it. I ask my students to analyze each other’s work in class. This helps students to know that they have to write in order to think more clearly. It improves their basic writing skills.
‘Headlines’ is another writing exercise students enjoy. It can be used for any topic. Another example of writing exercises is – Photographic Writing prompts. We also conduct writing competitions in Hindi. In June 2021, we conducted a Vocabulary Competition where all students made sentences with the new Hindi words shared with them. Though writing requires a lot of patience and time these writing activities and competitions are a great way to encourage our students and build their confidence in their writing skills.
By, Richa Saxena, IGCSE and Middle School Hindi teacher, Ekya School Byrathi
