Analyzing writing curriculums, planning writing workshop and teaching writing lessons can be overwhelming. You might think, how am I going to fit everything in and produce successful writers? Where do I start? What skills do they need? This post will share the 7 BASIC WRITING LESSONS that every teacher should teach! With this basic knowledge, students will be able to perform other writing assignments more effectively. The following skills are not only effective in upper elementary, they are often needed at the middle school level for review or the primary level for differentiation. So yes, every teacher should teach them! If you start with these 7 fundamental skills, it will set the expectations for your writing lessons and assignments throughout the year! Frequently Asked Questions What are the basic skills and what order should I teach them? Sentence Structure 1. Complete Sentences Lesson for complete sentences 2. Fragments Lesson for fragments 3. Run-ons Lesson for run-ons Paragraph Writing 4. Topic Sentences Lesson for topic sentences 5. Relevant Details Lesson for relevant details 6. Transition Words Lesson for transition words 7. Closing Sentences Lesson for closing sentences How much time should I dedicate to teaching these fundamental skills? I recommend one day for each skill. If you spend a whole writing block for each skill, students will benefit from the practice. How do I teach each skill? First: Start with an anchor chart explaining the skill. (See each lesson link above for effective anchor charts.) Second: Provide examples. Students can share examples too! Next: Students should take notes. I love using Interactive Writing Notebooks to take notes. Research supports the use of interactive notebooks through studies on multiple intelligences, the brain and note taking. Here are a few videos to Set Up Interactive Writing Notebooks. Click photo for the Upper Elementary Version. A Primary Version is also available. Then: Identify the skill. Provide practice sheets and task cards for students to practice identifying the skill in sentences and paragraphs. Last: Apply the skill. Students should have the opportunity to write their own sentence or paragraph to apply the particular skill. What if I can't fit the lesson in one writing block? If you can't extend the days to complete them, there are other ways to get the whole lesson in. You can put practice sheets or task cards in a center, or you can have students apply the skill for homework or morning work the next day. What if my students, some of my students, or absent students can't do interactive notebooks? Make a small anchor chart to put in their notebooks with the same information! If you don't have a printable poster, take a picture of the anchor chart you used in class and print them off! I hope you found this post helpful and your students become successful writers this year! Connect With Me! TPT Store Facebook Pinterest My Blog
Look at this! Use these fiction writing prompts to get the creative juices flowing in your students, and to teach them how to enjoy the writing process!
Teaching writing DOESN'T have to be complicated! With these simple strategies, you can improve students' writing without having to work so hard.
Journaling is a fun & low-pressure way to ease into writing. With that in mind, we’ve created 75 elementary writing prompts to help your students begin writing!
A writing template to help children when structuring text types.
Do you have elementary students in your homeschool? If so, you will find this FREE Elementary Reading & Writing Bundle so helpful! It’s full of useful homeschool printables for writing and reading assessment as well as reading comprehension. This limited time freebie will end on 4/26 so you will want to be sure to grab the...
When teaching narrative writing in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade, there are so many writing skills to cover. They range from creating a sequence of events (beginning, middle, and end) to more difficult
Writing doesn’t have to be hard. Whenever I talk to fellow teachers about what they HATE teaching… it always seems to be writing. Why is that? I theorize that it’s because writing is very personal. There’s no cut and dry methods that work for ALL students. It is also time consuming to teach AND especially […]
Worksheet for young learners. The students look at the pictures and answer the questions.If you want to find more picture dicionaries, they are here:https://en.islcollective.com/mypage/my-creations?search_key=picture+dictionary&type=printables&option=published&id=5163&grammar=&vocabulary=&materials=&levels=&studentTypes=&skills=&languageExams=&dialect=&functions=&page=1&sorting_type=most_newest&filter_type=filter_all&view_type=list&view_length=12 - ESL worksheets
Hello Everyone!! Happy New year to all of you! The end of 2015 and the beginning of 2016 have been very emotional for me. We started off our winter break visiting my son, Jordan in Indiana. He has made his way into the hearts of the people of southwest Indiana with his amazing storytelling and reporting for the local news station. And...He just bought his first house. We are so excited for him! We loved spending time with him over Christmas. --- On our drive back home, we kept getting texts, phone calls, and e-mails from friends about the 12 tornadoes that ravaged their way through the towns around our home in Texas. Oh my goodness---our emotions went from bliss to absolute heartbreak. So many of our friends lost everything, including a couple of teachers from our district. One of the elementary schools was hit and is now deemed unsafe. And sadly, 11 people lost their lives. The past few days have been filled with helping school and church groups gather needed supplies for those affected by this disaster. Texans do tend to jump in and help whenever needed!! The cleanup and rebuild will take years, but the support will be there. If you would like to help those in need during this time, here's a link to the red cross donation sight. Thank you in advance for sharing your blessings! http://www.wfaa.com/story/news/2015/12/28/how-to-help-tornado-victims/77965462/ These events really put things into perspective for me. What is important? Where should we put our passion? So many of us are blessed beyond measure. We take for granted who and what we have in our lives. Herein lies the resolution. Giving. The more you give, the more you receive. Throughout the coming year, I will continue to share things on this blog for anyone who can use them to help teachers, parents, and kids get excited about learning. Teaching is sharing. Teaching is giving. I will give the best I have. It may not always be perfect, it may not always fit everyone's bill, but, if what I share can help even one person, It is worthwhile!! So, having said all that, I am sharing a new unit. This one is all about Opinion Writing. You all know how much I love Lucy Calkins. This unit is based on her "Writing Reviews" book for first graders. When we get back from winter break, our firsties will be learning all about opinions and how to share them through writing. This unit is a precursor to one we will do on writing book reviews and other type of persuasive writing. It includes everything you need to print and go! Here are a few pics. The unit is about 32 pages. If you think you might be able to use any of this, simply click HERE for the printable download. As always, thanks for taking time out to stop by and read this little blog. I appreciate you! My New Year's wish for you is that you are surrounded by love and joy, and that you are blessed to be a blessing to others. If you are heading back to school next week, have a wonderful reunion with your littles. Give them the best you have!! Joyfully! Nancy
Get tips for how to teach Informative Writing, details about my Informational Writing Units & 3 FREE Informative Writing graphic organizers!
Are you searching for a fun and engaging way to reinforce reading comprehension skills for your second-grade students? Look no further! Introducing the Second Grade Short Story Worksheet�a perfect resource to help young learners practice identifying key story elements, improving vocabulary, and strengthening their overall reading skills. This worksheet focuses on fictional short stories specifically designed for second graders, making it an ideal tool for teachers or parents looking to enhance reading comprehension in a targeted and effective way.
Grammar and Writing are daunting subjects for many homeschoolers to teach. Most of us want a guide, an expert, someone to help us. I’m definitely a fan of literature-based homeschooling, but …
150+ fun, creative and thoughtful 4th grade writing prompts to encourage children to express their thoughts and feelings.
Refer your students this free Types of Writing printable to introduce to or remind them of the 4 main types of writing: narrative, expository, persuasive, and descriptive. Each type of writing includes a short definition. Great for writers’ notebooks! Just print and use! You Might Also Like:Word of the day for kids Google SiteFree Guided Readers-MiceBooks ... Read More about Four Types of Writing Printable
This Informational Writing - Transition or Linking Words Poster helps my students write informational pieces with more confidence and independence. I printed it as an 11x17 poster for display in the classroom and as an 8.5x11 resource sheet in my students' writing folders. It's so easy for them to read and use. They love it! Check out my other posters for use with your writing units. :)
Fun and engaging ESL activities, games and worksheets in printable PDF format with full teacher's notes and answers for English teachers to use in class.
Ring in the new year with these January Writing Prompts! Fun, educational, and imagination building ideas for Opinion, Narrative, and Informative writing.
How do you introduce opinion writing to your students? Do you use fun videos, interactive games, books to build background knowledge or current events? There
Looking for a fun way to introduce the writing process to your students? What about using playdough? Come grab a fun & hands on lesson for your classroom!
Simple tips for improving writing in your second or third grade classroom. These tips are a must if you want better writers!
Each classroom brings students of multiple learning styles and backgrounds. It is our job to provide opportunities that reach all of the many different learning styles that come to us. For this reason, it is
Tweet We are 7 weeks into the school year and gearing up for parent teacher conferences later this week. In our school, we try to schedule all conferences on a Thursday evening or Friday morning. This way if multiple folks need to be involved in the conference, we are all in the building at the same time. The evening hours also work much better for parents. As the math specialist I get invited to attend the difficult conferences. If a student is behind or in some cases very ahead of their peers, I will often be asked to join the conference. Classroom teachers also invite me when they know parents have specific concerns or when it is a student I have a lot of contact with. Sometimes I am asked to sit in on a conference because the parents are very difficult or have expressed opinions about their students math learning that do not show understanding of how or why we are teaching math as we do. Depending on the reason for the conference and what the concerns are, I have many approaches but here are a few things I always do in conference situations. - I like to start on a positive note by sharing a recent piece of student work that illustrates something they can do well or something that shows how far they have come. Because I do so much formative assessment, I have a lot of student work samples available to choose from and can always find something positive. - I then like to have parents share how they think their child is doing and any concerns they have. - I am all about data driven decision making so then I will share any assessments. For primary students this often includes individual interviews, especially if a student is behind. I go over the current assessment results and show their progress over time if applicable. - I show other student work and point out specifically how the work illustrates them progressing or not progressing toward meeting the standard. I also like to explain what the next steps are in terms of what we are working on next. - I prepare myself to answer the hard questions. Why are you teaching it this way instead of that way? These big questions parents have when they are new to my school or my way of thinking about math used to really challenge me. As I have become more experienced and read more research on math education I have been better prepared to answer these questions. I like to show parents that it isn't MY way of teaching that I am going for but rather what the research says works. - I focus on the big mathematical ideas for that grade. For each grade level I can think of 3-5 things that are the most important things kids have and understand in order for them to be successful in the next grade. If a student is behind, I focus the conference on the most important skills and make sure my discussion focuses on how to move a student forward with these big ideas. This year, in addition to my role as a math specialist (part interventionist and part coach), I have 2 groups of students that I am doing the primary math instruction for. This means that I will hopefully get to meet with the parents of kids in these groups because their classroom teachers don't see them for math. To help out with ones I might miss and to keep the classroom teachers up to speed on what their students are doing in math, I have been gathering data and putting together some things that can be shared with parents. One of the things I created for my fourth grade group was this quick reflection on their learning. I loved seeing their responses and it gave me great information about how they are feeling about math! Want to use this with your students? Click on the picture to get it from Google Drive.
If you have students who say, "I don't have anything to write about" then this writing activity could definitely work for you. It lends itself to pretty much any grade level. I was actually introduced
If you've been following my blog, you probably figured out that I love using writing rubrics! Today I want to share what a writing rubric is, why I like using them and share links to 3 free writing rubrics you can use.
This is a fun worksheet mainly for elementary school kids with a true or false activity with sentence writing.
In upper grade classrooms, students spend a great deal of time responding to the texts they read. Over the years I have found that no matter what grade level I teach, students have a difficult time writing thorough and meaningful reading responses. At the start of every year my students need quite a bit of guidance when writing their responses. One of the best ways that I have found to teach students to write meaningful responses is by providing them with sentence frames. I like to encourage students to follow three simple steps when writing reading responses, each with sentence frames and prompts to use: Step 1: What did you read? While reading... In chapter __ of... On page __ of... During today's reading of... Step 2: What happened in the text? Tell what a character said. Tell what a character did. Tell what a character thought, felt, or learned. Describe the setting. Describe an important event that occurred. Explain a problem that was encountered. Step 3: What did you think? This made me think... This made me realize... Based on this, I can infer... Based on this, I can predict... This reminded me of... I can relate to this because... I could visualize... I now understand... This three-step process encourages students to not only tell what happened in a text, but also reflect on what they thought or felt about what they read. Here is a sample response using these steps: I have included a FREE handout for you to share with your students to help guide them in writing thorough and meaningful reading responses. Click HERE download this FREEBIE. If you are looking for more resources for reading response, check out my Reading Response Journals for literature and non-fiction texts. These resources include anchor charts for different reading strategies and skills, as well as more specific sentence frames for the different skills. Click on the pics to learn more. Writing thoughtful reading responses is not always easy, but with a bit of guidance from using sentence frames and prompts, it will soon become second nature for students!!
Get your students reading and writing this summer with these fun and engaging enrichment activities for elementary grades.
The start to the school year for newcomer ELLs can be overwhelming and nerve-wracking. It is our job to set them up with tools to help them feel comfortable exploring a new language in a
A fun activity for students to write fun facts all about them. Back to School - All About Me - Box Theme Worksheet
Learn about the benefits of monthly writing prompts for kids. This article gives examples for each month as well as a free writing calendar.
Learn how to use picture writing prompts to keep elementary students engaged, writing, and having fun with the great ideas and suggestions here.
Time for another freebie! This one gives you organized lists of over 200 character traits words! Sorted for you by synonyms and by positive/negative, these handy lists take all the guesswork out of expanding your students' character trait vocabulary!