SHARON’S BLOG
Why should students write about themselves?
Reluctant writers are more apt to write about themselves and their experiences. Intrapersonal learners have their finger on the pulse of their hearts and thoughts, and they delight in journaling. And all writers enjoy a break from essays to splash around in personal writing from time to time.
Designed especially for 5th – 12th graders.
Dipping toes into water now . . .
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SHARON’S BLOG
Literature holds an Aladdin’s cave of treasures that students can plunge their pens into.
Whether it’s imitating good writing, pondering a topic in the story, or using the story to write another, your students will gain a healthy curiosity for great works of literature as they write.
To enjoy these fun prompts, knowledge of the following stories is not necessary.
Terms covered: epiphany, spatial description, and paraphrase.
These literature-based prompts are suitable for your 5th – 12th graders.
Ready to go treasure hunting?
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SHARON’S BLOG
The beginning of a new year is a special time when your students can look back on their past year and cherish their hopes and dreams for the future. But do they know how to express those?
Here are five prompts geared to help them express their ideas through opinion, personal narrative, personification, and so on, as they think about and evaluate their lives.
Suitable for students in grades 5 – 12.
Let’s do this . . .
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You know you have them—those story writers who won’t come out of their bedrooms, the ones who faint at writing essays but love writing stories.
They spend hours creating fictional worlds and populating them with characters in trouble who are looking for a happy ending.
Fiction is a powerful tool to influence readers’ hearts. Let’s equip our fiction writers with practices and insights that will give them success. You can read more about how authors grab readers’ hearts here.
As an added bonus, students who learn how to write more effectively in the world of fiction are absorbing communication skills they will use in their essay and research papers as well.
Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein before she was 19 years old. Christopher Paolini was only 15 when he wrote the first words to his best-selling Eragon. And Jane Austen wrote her first novel at age 14. When will your student be signing autographs?
These prompts are geared for students in 7th-12th grade. Use them now or bookmark them for later.
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To say that the Protestant Reformation had a great effect on the world is a vast understatement. Kings, kingdoms, and even everyday people felt the sting—and the freedom—this new movement brought.
Your students will be writing opinions, stories, and more while exploring some of the issues and topics associated with the Reformation, no matter your religious persuasion.
If you’d like your students to learn more about Martin Luther in an interesting biography, check out When Lightning Struck by Danika Cooley of Thinking Kids Press.
These prompts are appropriate for students in 5th – 12th grade.
Let’s dig in . . .
.
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Elections are fraught with anxiety, tension, and maybe even crying, but election-themed writing prompts do not have to be.
Your 5th – 12th graders will cast their vote for any of these interest-grabbing ideas.
No matter your political party, these prompts are winners, and you will be, too, when you share them with your students.
Stepping into the booth . . .
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Have your students ever been asked to write a compare-and-contrast paragraph or essay but don’t know where to begin? Do they have trouble organizing their thoughts and information before comparing and contrasting?
Your 5th – 12th graders will learn two solid methods for compare-and-contrast writing with this free tutorial. It’s packed with two separate exercises, one for each method, and contains complete instructions and colorful worksheets. Your students will learn how to organize their thoughts before writing with either method, and then they’ll write two paragraphs using each method.
Students already know how to compare and contrast in real life: They do it every time they want to buy something and are torn between two choices. They go through the process mentally, and it’s likely automatic and subconscious.
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Would you like your students to understand how to use proofreading marks? Do they know that they do not have to proofread for everything at once?
And did you know that it is easier for students to proofread if they practice on someone else’s mistakes?
Explore the posts below, appropriate for 7th – 12th graders. Click on any post’s image or link below to get started. FREE tutorials and printables included.
What will your students learn today?
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Looking for a fun way to teach grammar concepts to your 7th – 12th grade students?
This bundle of tutorials is geared to hold your students’ interest with colorful infographics and quirky sentences to work on. Each tutorial contains a lesson, an exercise, and the answers, all free for you to download and print at your leisure.
Commas with compound sentences, dialog punctuation, singular indefinite pronouns, and much more!
Use them now or bookmark them for future use.
Some of the tutorials below are featured in our eBook Let’s Eat Fifi. Read more about that 23-lesson grammar book here.
Click on the individual images or the links below for each tutorial.
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Do you “have a plan” or have you “hatched a scheme”? Are your students writing about the “circulation” of the blood or about how the blood “circulates”?
Do they understand how to use specific adjectives? Do they know the power of connotations? Do they turn sluggish nouns into working verbs? Do they define their terms?
Enjoy these nine tutorials that teach all of these things and much more. They will instruct your students in the finer art of using the elegant English language. Now students are not just writing; they are communicating.
Appropriate for 7th-12th graders. Use the lessons now or bookmark them for future use.
It’s time to dive into the splashy end of the pool . . .
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