Younger grades spend a lot of their writing time focusing on writing good paragraphs. Here’s one idea for teaching informative paragraph writing using a well known topic, Santa. The students can use the planner page to organize their thoughts and then write the final page on the Santa (and color, cut out, display as desired). Happy holiday writing!
Right click on the page above, choose “save image as” so you can save it to your computer for future printing.
Sometimes, I need a self-explanatory writing page (especially for the kids who finish a project faster than others). Here are some winter/Christmas themed story starters that students can continue with all the way to final drafts if you’d like. I figure there’s never a down side to having lots of writing projects available! To save the page to your computer, right click the page and choose “save image as.” Happy holidays!
A few teachers have requested a final draft page with the same picture. Here they are. If your students can’t write this small, have them use 2 lines, giving then a “half way line” for forming letters.
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I realized the other day that kids don’t seem to know Aesop’s fables very much! So I made a little collection incorporating some simple reading comprehension, grammar (parts of speech) and writing to teach a few. Here’s the plan:
Days 1-4: read a fable, complete questions on the bottom of the page. Click below to download the PDFs:
Day 5: Help kids write their own fable using this organizer –> Fable outline
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Submitted by an awesome teacher (Thanks!):
“This is a matching game to help our 2nd graders learn abbreviations. We ran the months off on one color, days of the week on another and the miscellaneous on another so that they could have a better chance at matching them. You can do it as a whole class activity or as a center during your literacy block. Once they do them, they are going to write them in their literacy journals.”
Click here to see the Word document matching game.
I’m always looking to incorporate goofy or holiday things into my lessons. So when I saw this, I just had to snap a photo! One teacher paired Halloween monsters with writing and art to teach alliteration. Each student first chose a letter and used only words starting with that letter to describe a monster they had made of construction paper. I’m not exaggerating when I say this was one of the most fun bulletin boards I’ve ever seen… not to mention it’s a way fun Halloween writing project!
Have you ever wondered what it’d be like to meet or be friends with a real Pilgrim? Well, after introducing life in Plymouth, Massachusetts, students can answer this question and practice writing skills at the same time. Here’s a really simple activity:
1. Print the coloring page to the left (right click, choose “save image as” so you can save it to your computer and resize it later). You can print one for the whole class to look at or one for each student if you’d like.
2. Help the students brainstorm things they know about pilgrims. What are their names? What do they do everyday? What was their life like before they came to America?
3. Assign each student to write a character description of these two Pilgrims. Then color in the picture (if you gave one to each student).
4. Display the projects proudly for all to see!
I saw this kind of worksheet in a kindergarten classroom recently and decided I could make my own. It’s always helpful to connect visuals with sounds when learning letter sounds.
This one’s a fun Halloween writing project… We talked about transition words first, and then specifically sequencing words. Then each student wrote about the steps to carving a pumpkin. Then students made the classic construction paper jack-o-lantern during art time to go with the finished writing project. Simple, yet festive!
Here’s a page for this idea (but smaller and less time consuming if you have kids just draw a pumpkin). Click here for the PDF: How to carve a pumpkin PDF
Click here for more fun and free Halloween stuff for kids!
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