Writing
With Writers Your students can learn writing skills from the very
best children's authors available. Scholastic.comhas
writing lessons developed by several famous
authors. Students can learn poetry-writing from
Jack Prelutsky
and then visit with him in an online
chat. Other authors teach students to write
biographies, book reviews, folktales, diary entries, myths,
and mysteries. Students may take writing lessons at any time
during the year, but specific authors are scheduled
"Live" during specific months. When the
author is the highlighted author, they actually critique
works submitted by students who have successfully completed
the writing steps and posted a writing online. Click on the
photo of Jack Prelutsky
to go the the
Writing with Writerspage.
E-zines
and Online Writing
There
are several websites that publish student writing.
Inkspot has a great page for students up to age
18 that has writing lessons, advice for young authors,
interviews with famous authors, and news about writing
contests open to students. Click on the student at the
left to go to the student writers site.
To
find lessons specifically written to help you differentiate
your writing curriculum and teach the writing process more
effectively, click on the teacher helping the student on the
right.
Comic
Strip Writing
Scholastic
Publishing has teamed up with Jim Davis, creator of the
Garfield Comic Strips to develop a software program that
enables students to create a Garfield Comic Strip by
choosing from hundreds of drawings of Garfield and his
friends, different settings, and various cartoon bubbles
indicating speech or thought. You may
want to use it to
motivate some of your learners who struggle with written
expression, by requiring them to write perfect sentences in
each frame. Or you can use it to motivate and expand
the creative expression of your students who shine in
written expression. It would also be an excellent tool
to teach your students skills in writing dialogue. You
could even choose to build writing skills while also
increasing your students' knowledge of specific
science or social studies concepts, by having them create
comic strips that cast Garfield as an instructor or
spokesperson teaching the chosen topic. Click on the
Garfield above for a link to an article from the EdTech News
that shares ideas for using the program plus a sample comic
based on a social studies unit.
CyberGuides
Have
you evaluated theCyberGuides
for Core Literature yet? CyberGuides are like online
core literature
units. If you have many student groups
reading different books, at different levels and find it
difficult to prepare great learning projects that correlate
with each group's book, you can visit CyberGuides to find
multiple resources. The units are efficiently
organized by grade level and book title, making it easy to
search for specific units you may need. Each
Cyberguide is carefully correlated with the State Language
Arts Standards. Valuable projects and tools to enhance
and differentiate your curriculum are included.
Technological
Story Writing Prompts
What
do you do when students have writer's block and just can't
seem to get excited about writing? Consider a
classroom story starter PowerPoint that students can watch
until one of the ideas truly captivates their imaginations.
You could have different PowerPoints for different genres of
writing. Click on the picture to the right for a
sample PowerPoint of personal narrative story starters. Better yet, go to one of the online sites
that
catalogues story starter prompts for young writers
experiencing writer's block. Click on the writing
tools picture to the left for a list of on line
prompts submitted by teachers.
units. If you have many student groups
reading different books, at different levels and find it
difficult to prepare great learning projects that correlate
with each group's book, you can visit CyberGuides to find
multiple resources. The units are efficiently
organized by grade level and book title, making it easy to
search for specific units you may need. Each
Cyberguide is carefully correlated with the State Language
Arts Standards. Valuable projects and tools to enhance
and differentiate your curriculum are included. 
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