Writing Activities & Free Resources to Teach Writing
Free Resources for Teaching Writing
Teaching Writing
Teaching how to write effectively is one of the most important life-long skills educators impart to their students. Whether teachers have a strict curriculum to which they must adhere or carte blanche to decide which projects approach and topics to tackle, they must select resources and support materials that will aid them in helping students reach their goals.
Time4Writing.com gives parents and educators a number of resources that assist in teaching writing. Teachers will find free writing resources on teaching sentence writing, writing conventions, and the revision process. There are also valuable articles and activities on other related writing topics, like sentence writing, paragraph writing, and essay writing. The articles provide information and guidance, while the activities motivate students to practice their skills with printable worksheets, quizzes, video lessons, and interactive games. Students love learning and practicing skills using technology, which makes online courses a great way to keep them interested and motivated to learn.
Free Writing Resources: Printables, Videos, Presentations, and Games
Students & Creative Writing
Students and creative writing don't always go together ... at first. Students may face a lack of ideas, or have so many that they can't narrow them down. Tools like writing and image prompts, odd situations, or suggestions of unusual characters often start the ideas flowing. It may take a push to get the imagination in gear, but once it's activated, students and creative writing ideas both take off, and there's no stopping them. ... Read More »
Graphic Organizers
Graphic organizers can help students put their writing ideas in order. These sets of charts, diagrams, and maps provide ways to brainstorm for details about a topic and then arrange those details in logical ways. Seeing how ideas relate to each other can often suggest which information is important, or help students pick which details to concentrate on. Graphic organizers are great tools for arranging information in preparation for writing an essay. ... Read More »
Writing Conventions
Writing conventions such as spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and grammar may take some work to learn, but the rewards are great. These conventions make a student's essay clear and understandable, demonstrating the care and thoughtfulness of the writer. When the reader never has to stop to try to figure out just what was actually intended, the value of learning these writing conventions becomes clear. ... Read More »
Critiquing & Grading
Critiquing and grading writing assignments is not as straightforward as grading math assignments. Yet rubrics can be carefully designed, and each type of element (writing mechanics, idea development, word choice, etc) can be given an appropriate weight. If a teacher knows the breakdown and value of each element, students can know how they're expected to write. Critiquing and grading of writing assignments thus becomes much easier for the teacher. ... Read More »
Students & The Writing Process
Going through the full writing process—from pre-writing to planning, drafting, and revising, and on to the final polished essay—can be a lot of work, but it's always worth the effort. Each stage builds on the previous one, and each stage would be much harder if the earlier stage hadn't been done. When students read the essay in its polished form, it becomes clear that following the complete writing process produced the best essay they could write. ... Read More »
