In the Comments section (below) of this post you will find websites that are useful for writing instruction. These are provided by the dedicated professionals who were participants in the All Write! class. You will find the URL for the site as well as a review. Feel free to respond to the reviews as well as to share them with colleagues.
Robert Young
Writer
Social Media Links
http://teachwithpicturebooks.blogspot.com/
Teach With Picture Books is an aptly named blogosphere gem authored by Keth Schoch, an author, presenter, and reading advocate. Through his blog, Schoch presents literature-rich ideas and activities while weaving in insightful perspectives for using literature and picture books as tools and catalysts in writing instruction. His informational posts include an image of each book he is featuring, and his blog sidebar labels are alphabetized for ease of use. Teachers who are interested in finding inspiring ways to target CCSS in writing as well as suggestions for implementing writing with picture books across the curriculum will find ideas such as:
Using Picture Books to Teach Argumentative Writing:
http://teachwithpicturebooks.blogspot.com/2013/02/fightin-words-using-picture-books-to.html
A reason for using bioographical picture books in writing:
http://teachwithpicturebooks.blogspot.com/
Conventions: Grammar and picture books:
http://teachwithpicturebooks.blogspot.com/search/label/grammar
Effective ways to share picture books:
http://teachwithpicturebooks.blogspot.com/2013/03/five-ways-to-share-picture-books-more.html
American Revolution:
http://teachwithpicturebooks.blogspot.com/2010/02/crossroads-of-revolution.html
Lesson planning:
http://teachwithpicturebooks.blogspot.com/search/label/lesson%20planning
http://writingfix.com/index.htm
WritingFix is a free site dedicated to K-12 writing instruction that initially served as a portal for writing teachers to share ideas and resources with one another. The site was founded in Nevada in 1999 and experienced growth and success until 2010 when economic trials brought its funding to a screeching halt. Currently, it is a static site, but it has been preserved as a continuing resource for writing teachers who are looking for resources, inspiration, and ideas.
Sampling of WritingFix offerings:
*Six Traits Voice: http://writingfix.com/6_traits/voice.htm
*Trait-inspired lessons K-1: http://writingfix.com/About_us/books_6_by_6_Guide.htm
*Writing Process “Post-it” Notes: http://writingfix.com/classroom_tools/post_its.htm
http://iew.com/
The Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW) website is an English Language Arts resource rich with products, support, informational articles, webinars, podcasts, and schedules of nationwide workshops. A good place to begin exploring this by visiting the Intro to IEW page:
http://iew.com/intro-iew
IEW is a writing curriculum with strategies that serve students from the very beginning, youngest grades to older students who are writing complex works. IEW offers step by step unit plans to a variety of ages featuring a variety of writing options, but the IEW “program” is actually more of a method than it is a product; it is intended to be used with any subject matter and can be scaled for any ability level. A quick overview can be seen here:
http://iew.com/intro-iew/working-iew-materials/how-does-iew-work
Some offerings from the IEW site include:
*IEW and Six Traits: http://iew.com/sites/default/files/article/fileattachment/6_Traits_%26_IEW.pdf
*Webinars: http://iew.com/events-classes/webinars/webinar-archive
*Articles: http://iew.com/help-support/resources/?f%5B0%5D=bundle%3Aarticle
*Downloads (create a free account first): http://iew.com/help-support/resources/supplementary-downloads
*Podcasts: http://iew.com/help-support/resources/?f%5B0%5D=bundle%3Amp3
http://storycorps.org/education/
StoryCorps is a national oral history project, which has collected and archived more than 50,000 interviews since its inception in 2003. Select interviews are broadcast weekly on NPR. The beauty of these interviews is that they involve regular people—grandchildren and grandparents, mothers and daughters, best friends, husbands and wives—and the recorded interview format gives participants an opportunity to ask and answer questions they might never have asked in a less formal setting.
Working with teenagers, I have found that they really like talking about themselves, but they often are uncomfortable engaging in meaningful conversations with people outside their immediate peer groups. The StoryCorps project and its lesson plans and resources are helpful tools in teaching active listening skills, questioning strategies, and ways to synthesize someone else’s story. The actual instructional materials are not vast in quantity, but what is provided is a wonderful way to begin an oral history project and there are many possible extension activities.
http://www.readwritethink.org/
ReadWriteThink is an amazing website with high-quality instructional resources available for every grade level. The instructional units are comprehensive; they are aligned to standards, contain objectives, lesson plans, worksheets, Power Point presentations, extensions, assessments, and related resources. Lesson plans and units are categorized by grade and searchable by key word. I searched “autobiography,” for example, and a wonderful unit called “It’s My Life: Multimodal Autobiography Project” came up.
http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/
The New York Times: The Learning Network is a tremendous resource for high school teachers. There are daily lesson plans tied to NYT articles covering a vast scope of current events. There is also an amazing search feature that will search NYT articles and lesson plans going back more than a decade. The lesson plans are divided into 16 categories, including Language Arts, Social Studies, Civics, Mathematics, Science, and Media Studies. A recent click on Media Studies brought up a lesson plan entitled “Skills and Strategies | Engaging in Causes Via ‘Hashtag Activism’”. This lesson plan included a link to Nicholas Kristoff’s article “Bring Back our Girls,” as well as several other resources, including a comprehensive lesson sequence and writing prompts..
Another wonderful part of this website is the ability to search by novel and find news articles and resources that match up with the themes in the novel. For example, a search of The Lord of the Flies brings up articles about leadership, corruption, and youth violence. Bringing news articles like these into the classroom really helps to make reading and writing more relevant to students.
http://www.pps.k12.or.us/departments/curriculum/2022.htm
The website has MANY diverse categories–almost too many. I searched for “Writing Lesson Plans” and it gave me 2034 choices. I narrowed it down to “Writing with Writers” and still had many choices to choose from. I noted that students can get writing ideas from actual published authors–sometimes ones that they may have already read. I think that this last feature would be a helpful connections to students believing that there is a reason to be a creative writer! There is also an interactive area on this site for the student to enhance word and writing skills. It is a K-12 site.
This is a multi-resource site. It has activities, worksheets, and quizes involving the use of English. Under the writing activities section are the categories of debate, newspaper, advertising, letter writing, writing stories, and writing instructions. I checked out the writing instructions section which was a multiple choice activity of figuring out step-by-step how to make a peanut butter sandwich. I felt that this would be appealing to my younger students and would teach them how to think logically and then how to write down logically instructions. The website is not only for elementary students but also can be used by middle and high schoolers. It is definitely ESOL friendly.
This is a website that offers interactive writing activities in the areas of 1) organizing and summarizing 2) inquiry and analysis 3) writing poetry 4) writing and publishing prose 5) learning about language for K12. I particularly like the poetry and learning about language activities because they will supplement nicely the core material that I use in my lessons. These activities start out really basic and move towards more complexity. This is beneficial because I work with students right now from preK level through middle school.
Story Jumper is a website for students to create online storybooks. The website definitely has a primary feel. Students can choose from several clip art images to inspire a story, as well as upload their own photographs, to create a storybook. The books are also available for purchase. Teachers can create a class so that students work is saved and the rest of the class can view it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem as if students can comment on each others work.
http://www.storyjumper.com/
The Curriculum Corner has some great resources for writing in the elementary classroom. This website is for opinion pieces, which are part of the second grade CCSS. There are ideas for helping students differentiate between persuasive and opinion writing, a list of mentor texts, graphic organizers, practice prompts, and more…for FREE! There are not specific lesson plans, but rather the resources needed to craft a unit on opinion writing.
http://www.thecurriculumcorner.com/thecurriculumcorner123/2014/02/11/opinion-writing-ideas-resources/
The Portland Public Schools have shared (for FREE) their work on developing a notebook to support the teaching of writing. There are Writer’s Workshop lesson plans for K-5 on the website. I have used some of the lessons, and appreciate how they are sequential and organized, and therefore easy to follow. Some of the grade levels lack lessons to support the respective CCSS, but overall I think this is a great resource for elementary teachers.
http://www.pps.k12.or.us/departments/curriculum/2022.htm