Teaching the writing process to kids enables you to display a whole world of creative possibilities for them. Introducing fun and engaging writing tasks at a young age can instill a love of reading and writing, which is what we all want for our kids! It’s important to have a variety of activities ready to keep their attention. To help you instill a sense of confidence in young writers, we’ve compiled a list of 20 engaging resources for you to utilize!
1. The Best Part of Me
This adorable writing activity introduces students to the process of writing and promotes a positive classroom community. Students are encouraged to write about “The best part of me”; it could be a beautiful smile, helpful hands, fast legs, etc.
Learn More: Molly Maloy
2. Writing Tools Folder
Make your students a writing folder to keep track of their work. Add a list of commonly misspelled words to help reduce spelling errors. Keeping work all together helps kids develop good organizational skills too!
Learn More: Primary Flourish
3. Break it Down
Breaking a task down into chunks encourages kids to plan their writing well from an early age. By using ‘first’, ‘next’, and ‘last’ prompts in your activity, you save valuable time and scaffold the task for your students.
Learn More: First Grade Buddies
4. P-O-W-E-R Method
Plan, Organize, Write, Edit, Revise. The P-O-W-E-R method teaches kids to first plan their writing, then organize it, write the body of the text, edit it, and then make revisions. These colorful posters can be used in classroom displays or printed and given to each individual student.
Learn More: Laura Randazzo
5. Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich
Story sequencing is an important skill to learn at the prewriting stage. Walking through an activity step-by-step introduces kids to instructional language. Writing skills are encouraged by exposing kids to an abundance of fun writing activities.
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6. Pre-Writing Heart
Part of the writing process is collecting and organizing information. Idea mapping is an important skill to learn. This fun and creative task can be filled in by children before they start writing. Best of all it can be adapted for any topic!
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7. B-M-E Map
B-M-E modeling (beginning, middle, and end) encourages a good flow of ideas within the writing. Modeling this for your students first sets them up for success. Explain to your students that their story needs a character, an introduction at the beginning, a problem in the middle, and a happy conclusion at the end.
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8. Paragraph Writing
This burger activity introduces students to the importance of having a connection between ideas. Making sure their writing makes logical sense is key too. Let them discuss as a class what makes a good paragraph!
Learn More: Upper Elementary Snapshots
9. CUPS for Editing
Teaching the editing process can be made much simpler by drawing a cup outline and laminating the image to create this editing activity. C-U-P-S reminds children to check their Capitals, Understanding, Punctuation, and Spelling. This visual reminder is perfect for teaching careful editing and correct punctuation at the beginning of the editing stage.
Learn More: Teachers Pay Teachers
10. ‘How-To’ Writing
Little kids are always eager to share their experiences, so put them to the test with this “how to” activity. Topic ideas could be anything from “how to build a snowman” or “how to make a sandcastle”. Before your learners spend time writing their pieces, help them create a brainstorming list to generate ideas!
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11. Gallery Writer’s Walk
Hand out your student’s work randomly. Then, allow each student adequate time to read their peer’s work and correct spelling errors.
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12. Explode the Moment
This is a fun, creative writing exercise that your learners are sure to love! Learners must take a basic sentence from their story and add a vivid sensory detail to “explode” it and make it reader-friendly.
Learn More: Raise the Bar Reading
13. Opinion Writing Posters
Create posters that your kids can refer to when working on opinion or persuasive writing techniques. Get the kids involved in making them and brainstorm some transition words and phrases together!
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14. Goal Setting
A popular prewriting strategy is to build confidence at the early stage of the writing process. These simple writing goal boards help learners keep track of their progress in a visual way! Name pegs allow you to keep track of student progress too.
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15. Show Don’t Tell
For this fun game, distribute these printable bingo cards to your class. Discuss whether they are ‘show’ or ‘tell’ phrases. The teacher reads a card and students must then decide how the telling phrase could be replaced with a showing phrase!
Learn More: Upper Elementary Snapshots
16. Mind Mapping
Also known as idea maps, these tools provide a visual way to display thoughts. They’re a popular brainstorming technique and ensure that ideas are clearly defined. They’re perfect for discussing a topic as a group as each student can contribute.
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17. Prewriting Printable
This dot marker activity is a perfect prewriting exercise for little ones who are just developing their fine motor skills. All you will need is some bingo markers or chunky colored markers. The goal is to neatly fill the circles with color.
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18. Terrific Transitions
Coming up with effective transition words as a group will enable your students to feel confident using complex sentence structures in their work. Display common transitions in your learning space to make the writing process easier for your students.
Learn More: Teaching with Love and Laughter
19. Personalized Writing Jar
If your students are struggling with writing process ideas, this simple writing jar is the perfect tool! Students simply pick an activity from the jar and work on the task. You will need an empty jar, popsicle sticks, and some cards. Use markers and stickers to decorate.
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20. Story Builders
Kids often find selecting a topic to write about hard; taking the fun out of the writing process. Create four different categories of cards (character, character trait, setting, and plot). Task your students to pick one from each pile to create a surprising topic to write about!
Learn More: Education Possible
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