How to Help a Child Write a Report

Define the purpose and choose a topic. There are many different kinds of reports, and your child needs to understand what type he is writing. Is it a book report written to summarize a plot or to convince someone to read the book? Is it a science report, or a report on a state or foreign country? Once your child has a clear grasp of the report's purpose, you will need to help him choose a topic. Younger students will generally write reports that give a broad overview of a subject and older students will need to choose more specific topics.

Brainstorm ideas for the report. If the report requires research, make sure that your child does all of the necessary research before beginning to write. Encourage your child to come up with lots of ideas during the brainstorming phase and to write them all down no matter how silly they are. The goal is to come up with far more ideas than will actually be used in the report.

Ask your child to choose the ideas that seem the easiest to write about. This step is where most of the hard work of thinking and connecting ideas should happen, so the student can focus on coming up with sentences once he gets to the writing step.

Have your child create an outline with complete sentences. Encourage your child to fully flesh out the ideas she wants to write about.

Let your child write the report. Encourage your child not to worry about perfection, as the next step in the writing process will be editing and mistakes can be fixed then.

Revise and edit the report. This can be done as either a one-step or two-step process; editing refers to correcting small mistakes such as spelling and grammar errors, while revising refers to larger changes such as adding or subtracting sentences or changing the order of paragraphs. Depending on your child's independence level and the amount of help you feel comfortable giving, you may want to mark errors and have your child correct them, or guide your child to find errors on her own.