5 Tips for Teaching Writing in Your Classroom

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5 Tips for Teaching Writing in Your Classroom: My goal as a teacher is always researching and thinking of ways to get my kids to WANT to write and to grow as writers. I want to share with you some tips I have used that are classroom tested and work! Hopefully today you will walk away with some great tips and ideas!

Model, Model, Model:

1. Model, Model, Model: Yes, you want model good writing skills for kids to see. Use anchor charts, your smart boards, white boards, your writer’s notebooks. Write with your students. Let them see you write and help you write. Write together!

Assign an open ended prompt (ie: Best Day Ever) and show students the writing process steps one-by-one as students help along.
Act it out while writing. Prompt students to help you in writing your story.
Let them hear you THINK as you write. Let them see you mess up, make changes and truly write!
The students no matter what age will LOVE watching their teachers go through the writing process on each story as they are writing their own.

Writing Prompts:

2. Creative Writing Prompts : Are you thinking and using great prompts that will motivate and encourage writing. You need to change up writing genres every so often. You cannot always rely on Narrative or Expository Writing. You can have students write Book Reviews, Recipes, How-To’s, Songs, Poems, Plays, Mysteries, and much more. Your goal is to grow writers in all Genres! So changing it up and trying different types of writing will encourage students to grow in different areas, and you never know, some may really show their skills in one area and surprise themselves.

Writing Center Area:

3. Writing Tools: When your students begin writing they should have all the tools needed to make their writing time smooth. When I say tools I mean an area with all the necessities: Dictionaries, thesaurus, WORD WALLS, markers, pens, pencils, sharpener, erasers, paper, sticky notes, notebooks, helpful writing tools. This could be a little nook in your teaching area. The students should know that if they need something they can visit the area and get tools to help them be the best writer ever.

You can visit my Pinterest Boards: to see some great examples of classroom writing center areas. I love how many teachers organize it to meet their students needs. It doesn’t have to take up tons of space, but having an area set aside will really help your little writers.

Publish:

4. Publishing Their Writing: Do you allow students to publish their writing? Have you taken the time to try out different publishing ideas? Of course, you complete the published works after the students went through the entire Writing Process. Students LOVE seeing their final work on display and take pride and getting to that point. Imagine all the hardwork and seeing it on display. After EVERY.SINGLE.PIECE of writing I would have my students publish their writing! It builds them up for some great writing. My students would work so hard on the writing process to SHOW OFF their writing at the end. I TOTALLY let my students share when they are ready with their published pieces. I noticed when I started allowing this in my classroom my students took pride in their work, and it helped GROW some fabulous writers!

Some PUBLISHED WRITING IDEAS I use are [see images for my student examples]

•FANCY paper to publishing paper [you can create or buy fancy paper].

•Writing booklets to create a cover, the writing, and the back.

•Index Card Booklets

•Powerpoint Presentations Published Pieces

•Using Large Chart Paper- allow students to decorate and write on chart paper

Revisit Writing:

5. Revisit and LOOK Back: Now, what does look back mean? That means you have your students revisit and look back at their past writing
samples and see how they have grown as writers in your classroom. They sometimes want to improve their writing they completed at the beginning of the year. I allow this, it shows me how much they appreciate us taking time to revisit their past writing. I never allow my students to throw away ANY writing they complete in my classroom. I tell them that everything we complete is a masterpiece and we save everything.

Freebies to Help You:

I truly hope that these 5 quick easy to use tips will help you in your writing class. As teachers we are always looking for new ways to grow our students to the best of our ability. I want to share with you some ways I took writing to a whole new level. I am giving you a sample of some of my writing resources.

Year LONG Writing Prompt Bundle – Narrative, Expository, Opinion, Creative Writing with over 170 Writing Prompts. Each set has double the pages because of the options given to the teacher for student success! Plus Graphic Organizers for Narrative, How To, Expository Writing and Publishing Pages!
Picture Weekly Prompts – I created these to include a weekly prompt, revision & editing paragraph, and step by step writing process for students to follow each day of the week.
Picture Writing Prompts [ Quick Write, Narrative, Expository Writing]- These prompts are written with a picture and a prompt, plus a writing
checklist.
Writing Prompts: Photo of the Week- This is a set to use your entire school year! These Writing Prompts are a perfect activity to complete for warm-ups, bell work, independently in literacy groups, homework, extension work, and more! It is set up by: Monday: Inference and prediction writing using writing prompt| Tuesday: Notice and brainstorming | Wednesday: Introduction {Hook Writing} | Thursday: The body of the story | Friday: closing and ARMS and CUPS
Picture Writing- Quick Write Set #2- These Quick Write Prompts will encourage fabulous and motivating writers! These prompts are written with a picture and a prompt, plus a writing checklist [who, what, when, why, how- to encourage writing].