Writing Resources For Elementary Students – Going back to school can be stressful, but your first writing class doesn’t have to be! This simple but meaningful activity is a fun and informative way to kick off the back-to-school season and introduce students to writers from the first day of school.
I love using this writing lesson at the beginning of each school year because it provides so many benefits! After years of teaching and developing this activity, I realized that the lesson was:
Writing Resources For Elementary Students
This lesson will also help you get to know your students as writers, build rapport and positive relationships with your students, and learn about their writing strengths and areas for improvement. All of this will help you at your first writing conference of the year.
Writing Response Task Cards
Or want to try Read the steps to teach this lesson, then grab the printable lesson at the bottom of this post.
Start with a blank anchor chart titled What Do Good Writers Do? Then read Tad Hills’ short story The Rocket Makes History. Ask students to listen for strategies that good writers use when reading a book aloud. After reading the book, but before discussing it as a class, ask students to answer the reader’s reflection questions. When they are finished, discuss each question and writing strategy with the class.
After reading the book, have students work in pairs, small groups, or independently to use strategies and techniques that good writers use. Ask students to write down their ideas in their notebooks and be ready to share.
Now your students are ready to share the strategies that good writers use. Record students’ ideas on the class leader board. If your students need some guidance, you can use the pre-written basic chart ideas included in the free lessons at the bottom of the post. Use the pre-made list to guide student discourse so that students can develop these ideas on their own. Show your completed anchor chart to the class.
Best Practices: Writing Workshop At Vces
Now comes the creativity! Ask students to introduce themselves as authors! This is such an empowering activity for students to not only fill out, but to see their report card hanging on the board. Students should create colorful pictures with their writing. As they draw, help them by asking:
These questions should be answered with their illustrations. Ask students to name their illustration too! This activity is perfect for your first written newsletter of the year, or leave these illustrations throughout the year. I will post it on your bulletin board for the first month of school and then take it down and add it to my students’ notebooks.
Once the first lesson is officially over and your student authors’ illustrations are off, ask them to write. I like to have students choose from three prompts to write about during the first week of school. I give them a choice of three personal narrative prompts since this is our first piece we are studying.
I do not give instructions to students for the first written application of the year. They simply select a request and sign. These first writing passages are valuable formative assessments for me as we begin our first chapter of writing. They are also a great comparison tool for students at the end of the year as they reflect on their growth as writers. Keep these first patterns safe so students can compare the first and last pattern. It’s the best last day of school writing ever!
Writing Template Writing Page Journal Page Printed Lined Paper Drawing Sheet Writing Stationary Homeschool Printable Summer
And that’s it! These five steps will help get the school year off to a great start and get students excited about writing this school year!
You’ll love teaching this lesson on the first days of school every back-to-school season. This will not only engage your students, but also motivate them. This activity will provide you with valuable information about each of your new students as a writer and will help guide your instruction in the first part of writing.
117 Comments Leader Chart, Back to School, Back to School Tips, Beginning of the Year Activities, Free Lesson, Free Lesson, Read Aloud, Writing Activities, Writing Lesson, Writing Prompt. Looking to update your writing pad for February? Below are tons of fun topics for in-person learning and some additional ideas for digital learners!
Grain has to see its shadow, right?! 6 more weeks of winter or 6 extra weeks of spring? Students will choose a side, advocate for their cause, and create a cute craft to hang in the hallway or take home! Save this interesting resource here.
Winter Craft Bundle With Writing Prompts
Celebrate the nice people in life by having students write who they think is the nicest person and why. It can be taken from an opinion or informational perspective and makes a great gift for parents, guardians or other educators. Complete this activity in person or digitally!
Have students create and write about their love monster! As they write this informative piece and create this cute craft, students will think about what activities their love monster likes, use metaphors to describe what their love monster looks like, and reveal other creative details about their love monster! Complete this activity in person or digitally!
Give students time to research any president and complete this fun writing research project. Assign a president or let them choose one, and then give students time to research, take notes, and turn their notes into an informative report. Finally, the students can finish this fun craft and hang it in the hall for all to see! Or bring it home for mom and dad to hang on the fridge. Either way, enjoy this fun activity here.
This project is perfect if you don’t have a lot of time to devote to crafting, but still want to improve your writing pad. Students will write ways to show love or kindness, then create this fun, hearty peacock! Stop this activity here.
Super Writing! A Writing Fluency Activity
Are you teaching virtually this year or looking to add a digital option to your classroom? These projects can be done completely independently and even have instructional videos for students. Below are some notes specifically designed for February: Teaching writing can seem daunting. It’s hard to know where to start and what to do. What if I told you that setting up starter writing centers and writing pads could be as easy as squeezing a lemon? Read on to learn everything you need to know about creating a writing block that actually works for you, your students, and your classroom.
The biggest struggle with beginning writing centers is the limited amount of time in the day that we actually teach writing. I have worked in many slots from 20 minutes a day…yes 20 minutes to teach writing to a whole class…to 90 minutes! If you have a choice, 60 minutes is ideal, 45 minutes is good, and 20 minutes is hard.. but we can do it.
You’ll want to break your writing block just like any other content. Timing will vary depending on the distribution of the total content block:
If your writing block is limited, you can be creative with your writing time. Maybe instead of warming up to writing during a writing block, you can do it as a morning thing. If you don’t have time to do all the writing centers you want, put them in the reading centers and call it ELA time. The main components you don’t want to miss when writing are your mini-lesson, small group meetings, independent work time, and closing.
5 Poetry Activities For Upper Elementary Students
My favorite writing warm-up method is to simply have students use a digital or handwritten journal each day. Students can use a whole group topic or write about whatever they want. This writing is usually not graded and helps students develop their writing skills.
Another great warm-up for writing is to have students work on grammar topics. Students can identify parts of speech, work on different parts of speech, or do daily grammar corrections. It helps students know how to use English correctly in formal writing.
After the warm-up, a whole-group mini-lesson is a natural next step. This lesson can and should be kept short so that students have the most time to write in their notebooks. Each week we produce one formal paper to add to their year’s writing portfolio. Each week in my mini-lessons, I follow the same lesson plan to help students write:
Students are not actually writing during the mini-lesson. This is when there is open class dialogue and I model on the white board or graph paper.