Your young student needs to know why they are being asked to do a project or write on a topic. Remind them that writing for speeches, projects, and essays will help them learn and perfect their writing capability so that they can express their own ideas to many people through their writing.  Tell them that their writing skills will be needed in all future grades to complete their assignments more easily.  Highlight that when a student learns to write well in school, they can then use that special skill to help them in any job they may want to have as an adult.

Your student needs to appreciate that the purpose of every project, essay, or speech is intended to provide the audience with an understanding of the topic by providing important and related facts or by providing a necessary sequence of related steps in a process.  Facts to be presented about a topic will most easily be organized by answering “who”, “what”, “when”, “where”, and “why” questions.    Conversely, if the purpose of the writing assignment is to tell “how” to do something it will be important for your child to sequence the steps of the process by using transitional words such as “first”, “then”, “next”, “furthermore”, and “finally”.  Highlight the importance to your son or daughter that the most important goal remains the same for all writing: tell about the topic or idea as clearly and with as much interest as you can.  Periodically remind your child that the longer range goal of writing projects, essays, and speeches remains that of becoming a good writer, through practice, in order that others will better understand and appreciate our ideas and points of view.

On the matter of choosing a topic, in the early grades students will often simply be assigned a specific topic or given a choice from a predetermined list.  If your child has to independently select something or someone to write about, help him or her to first focus within a broader area of personal interest and choose a related and manageable topic.  Then, with your child, source some material from the local library, and encourage and help your student do a little reading in order to acquire an overview and a general understanding of the topic.  Next, help your student to identify and list, in point form, important and interesting facts on separate sheets of paper.  Furthermore, encourage your child to focus on the following: Who, beyond just a name (or a noun), is the person (or thing)?  Why are they (or it) important?  What do they (or this thing) do that makes them so interesting?  When and where do (or did) they make themselves important, or when and where is (or was) this thing important?  Helping your child to understand the usefulness of such of questions during the research process is essential to your son or daughter achieving success at writing, even at an early age.  When your child has chosen to write about “how to do something”, encourage your student to choose a process with which they are already quite familiar.  Then have them research or reflect on the logical steps that are to be followed by the reader or audience.  At this point, having gained a sense of content and scope from the researched facts about the topic or the carefully considered steps of the selected process, help your child prepare to write the primary and subsequent drafts.

Writing and editing a series of draft paragraphs is a process in itself.  Assist your child to write the topic sentence for each of the sub-elements of the subject being presented  on separate and corresponding five-inch by seven-inch index cards.   Next, help your child create and write the supporting sentences based on the point-form related facts they listed previously.   In addition, your student may need to add examples or explanations in point form as part of their developing draft to help make the facts or steps easier to visualize. 

Once your child has completed a card for each element, they should write one special and all encompassing introductory paragraph in point form on a separate index card.  The first sentence of the introductory paragraph should capture the attention of the viewer or audience.  The following three or four point form sentences should briefly introduce the main elements that were researched and included within the project or speech.  The final sentence should make a statement regarding the importance of the specific topic.  The draft project or speech has now been completed on the index cards and can be easily edited by your child with your assistance and direction.  When the time comes to transcribe the information onto identical sized index cards, the child will be able to rewrite the information knowing how to allot space per line based on the spacing used on the draft index cards.  Alternatively, the draft paragraphs from the index cards may become the source for writing full sentence paragraphs for the project or for an essay.