Writing Lessons at ReadWriteThink.org

After reading through “Using Web 2.0 in the Classroom” in the most recent issue of Reading Today, I went online to ReadWriteThink.org to read through a lesson entitled “Weekly Writer’s Blogs.” It was too advanced (i.e., grades 9-12) for my students, but I realized it might not be too old for Ruth’s.

I decided to compile some writing lessons I liked from ReadWriteThink.org for Ruth and for all readers too. The writing lessons I picked, from all grade levels, follow below. As with any ReadWriteThink Lesson Plan, you can usually adapt it to for your students. (I’ve adapted high school lesson plans for my kids… it just takes a little work.) HAPPY TEACHING!

• Alphabiography Project: Totally You
  
• Avoiding Sexist Language by Using Gender-Fair Pronouns
  
• Choosing One Word: Summarizing Shel Silverstein’s “Sick”
  
  • I’ve used the “Most Important Word” Strategy as per the Beers Book (see “From Theory to Practice” Section in the lesson), but I’ve never extended it like this. I think this is a really neat idea.
    
• Describe That Face: An Interactive Writing Game
  
• Every Punctuation Mark Matters: A Mini-Lesson on Semicolons
  
• Found Poems/Parallel Poems
  
  • I’m working on a found poem for this Friday’s Poetry Friday. It’s more challenging than I ever thought it would be!
    
• Improve Students’ Writing Using Online Workshops    
  
• Memories Matter: The Giver and Descriptive Writing Memoirs
  
• Persuading the Principal: Writing Persuasive Letters About School Issues
  
• Shape Poems: Writing Extraordinary Poems About Ordinary Objects
  
• The Children’s Picture Book Project
  
• Weekend News: A Weekend Writing Activity
  
• Weekly Writer’s Blogs
  
  • This is the lesson I mentioned above.
    
• Who’s Got Mail? Using Literature to Promote Authentic Letter Writing
  
• Writing Reports in Kindergarten? Yes!
  
• Zines for Kids: Multigenre Texts About Media Icons