WRITING ACTIVITIES

Every piece of writing should have a purpose, such as to inform, persuade, describe, or entertain. Try these activities to teach and inspire your students to write:

Writing

Creative Writing

• Help your students learn to sequence ideas. Assign a partner to each student. Give the pair a copy

of a paragraph in which the sentences are written separately in mixed sequence. Instruct them to cut the sentences apart and rearrange them in a clear, logical order. Look for examples of your students’ work to use in reinforcement lessons or to teach related skills, such as combining sentences with connector words (conjunctions).

• Introduce descriptive writing. Tell students that writing a description is like painting a picture

with words. Teach or review types of words that lend themselves to descriptive writing: colorful adjectives, sensory words, similies, and metaphors. Ask students to write three sensory words or

a phrase describing how something looks, sounds, smells, feels, and tastes. Next, give each student

a picture. Ask the students to write descriptions based on their pictures. Instruct them to write their stories as if no one else had seen the pictures. Tell the students to use lots of details and sensory words to describe objects, characters, or action.

Essay Writing

• Help each student organize an informal essay. Instruct the students to choose topics with three parts, such as “My Three Pets.” Tell them each to write five paragraphs. The first should introduce the topic and the three parts. The next three paragraphs should give details about each part. The final paragraph should offer a summary or conclusion.

• Help students write persuasive essays. Begin by asking them to write down

Writing things they would like to see changed at home. Next, tell them to list things

they would like to see changed in their learning environments. Tell them each to choose one item for the topic. To prepare for writing, tell them to list the reasons why a change is needed and details of how a change should be made. When they are ready to write, challenge them to try to convince you to share their points of view.

Journal Writing

• Have your students keep writing journals for jotting down ideas, thoughts, interesting words, spelling helps, phrases, strong active verbs, examples, etc. Their journals can also contain samples of various writing activities.

• Test each student’s memory skills with this journal-writing activity. Ask the student to think back to the earliest experience she recalls clearly. How old was she? Have her write about this memory in her journal with as much detail as she can.

Ideas

• Take a moment to let students close their eyes and daydream. Get them started by telling them

to imagine a place—how it looks, how it feels, how it smells. Then tell them to let a story unfold in that place. After a period of silence, have students write a journal entry titled “Lost in a Daydream.” Instruct them to write down as many details as they can about the dream’s setting, characters, and events. They should record any conversations they imagined, and tell how the daydream made them feel.

A good rule of thumb: Have each student keep two separate journals—one for drafts, works in progress, and journal entries you will ask to see, and another for personal reflection that is for their eyes only. Assure the students that you will respect their privacy with regard to personal journal entries.

Rule of Thumb

Letter Writing

• Instruct your students in the finer points of letter writing. Show them the heading, salutation,

body, closing, and signature for each letter form. Give them practice writing several types: friendly letters, thank-you letters, invitations, pen-pal letters, business letters, research-by-mail letters, fan letters, editorials, letters of complaint, and cover letters. All of these activities can help students appreciate the many varieties of this writing form.

Poetry Writing

• Encourage poetry writing by offering poem-starters—once rhythmic line from

a poem (famous or original) on which to build. Begin by brainstorming several lists of rhyming words. Then ask your students to choose and complete a poem starter, such as “I think that I shall never see . . . ,” “Once upon a mid- night dreary . . . ,” or “Did I ever tell you about the time . . . ?”

• Teach your students how to write acrostic poems. Ask them to write their

Ideas names vertically in capital letters, then create poems by using each letter to

begin a line. Tip: Remind students that not all poetry has to rhyme! Example of an acrostic poem by Sara:

Someday I’ll be a famous Actress. I’ll play all sorts of Roles. Sometime I’ll win an Academy Award!

Journalistic Writing

• Invite your students to be “cub reporters.” Begin by giving this assignment: A spaceship has landed nearby. Write a news report that tells who, what, where, when, and how; then illustrate your scoop.

• Help your students create a mini-newspaper. Teach them the aspects of publish- ing the news—gathering facts, taking notes, doing interviews, writing stories, cre- ating illustrations, writing headlines, planning layout, and printing.

WRITING ACTIVITIES