Parent Tips: Audience

Most writing programs wait until kids are much older to begin teaching them about the importance of audience. If you’ve been taught writing and text analysis using a classical rhetoric method, you may recognize audience as a key part of that methodology. Unfortunately, not believing in the ability of children to understand the concept of audience means that kids miss the opportunity to develop depth and flexibility in their thinking and writing when they are most malleable. June Writers Academy believes young children can and should learn about audience, so we begin introducing the concept very early in our practices. Some kids will immediately pick up the skill. Other kids will need support putting themselves in other people’s shoes.