Writing Anxiety for Your Students? Read 6 Tips to Help

Do you work with students who have writing anxiety? Perhaps your students struggle with handwriting and writing assignments and encounter feelings of anxiety and stress when faced with school assignments.  Educators, parents, and therapists can possibly help students succeed with their writing assignments with these tips.

Suggestions to Help Deal with Writing Anxiety

Try playing some background music.

It may help your students to deal with writing anxiety by playing background  music in the classroom or with headphones.

In fact, according to Dr. David Lewis-Hodgson of Mindlab International, who conducted research on sound therapy and found that listening to one song — “Weightless” — resulted in a 65 percent reduction in participants’ overall anxiety, and a 35 percent reduction in their usual physiological resting rates.  You can listen to the complete 8 minute song on You Tube.  You can even listen to it for 10 hours on You Tube if you wish!

Allow for free writing on the first draft.

Encourage the students to just write and not to erase.  Don’t put too much pressure on the first draft just focus on getting your ideas and thoughts on the paper.  Educate students that sometimes the first step is just getting ideas down and not to worry about proper grammar or spelling.

Sometimes starting with a graphic organizer can help students get started with the basics.

Use highly engaging writing prompts to reduce writing anxiety.

Search for prompts that encourage students to share their lives, opinions, and prior knowledge to help increase motivation and decrease anxiety when writing.

Take the time to allow for free writing when students can pick the topic themselves or just write to reflect and not be graded to establish a habit of writing.

Need ideas? These handwriting prompts provide 100 questions of the day to answer throughout the year.  Students will answer questions and draw a picture for engaging daily prompts. The packets are provided in single line AND double line style.

Share your writing when done.

Students can share writing with peers, small groups or teachers. This can be done in person or via distance learning with discussion boards. Encourage students to provide positive feedback first.

Abandon the topic if necessary.

Just like sometimes we have to abandon reading a book, if you are bogged down by the writing process perhaps you need to tweak or abandon the topic to allow for improve written expression.

Provide choices.

Whenever possible provide choices so the student can pick topics that are highly engaging and meaningful to him or her.

References:
Alber, Rebecca. New Teachers: Inspire Your Students to Write, Write, Write.  Edutopia.  Retrieved from the web on 11/15/16 at https://www.edutopia.org/blog/new-teachers-inspiring-your-students-write-write-write-rebecca-alber

Curtin, Melanie.  Neuroscience Says Listening to This Song Reduces Anxiety by Up to 65 Percent.  Inc.  Retrieved from the web on 11/15/16 at http://www.inc.com/melanie-curtin/neuroscience-says-listening-to-this-one-song-reduces-anxiety-by-up-to-65-percent.html

Are you looking for fun and new ways to practice handwriting while reinforcing other concepts? This Writing Prompts Google Slides activity is packed with a variety of ways to get writing! Kerri Healey, COTA has created this interactive game to add FUN and learning while your students practice their handwriting skills.