Character Portraits  This is partly reading as well as writing but thought I'd add this anyway.

Once a book has been read, with a particularly good character to use for ...

Writing Hall of Fame  In my Year 2 class this term the text type focus was recounts. Each Monday and Friday students would write a recount of an event.

Before independent ...

Star of the Week  Each week a student in the class is chosen to be the star of the week. This person is given the opportunity to tell the class a bit about themselves, their ...

Reciprocal Writing v Interactive Writing  In NSW we wouldn't call your article "interactive" writing..we'd call it RECIPROCAL writing. Interactive writing is seen as quite a bit different and is ...

Genre Writing  While teaching a year 3 class I discovered an innovative way to teach children how to write a narrative and cover all the required parts to this genre....

Figure of 8 Drawing  This is not actually my idea, but something that I understand sports teachers teach to help left and right brain co-ordination for students, and is also ...

A collection of Collective Nouns  Create a word wall of collective nouns and a word wall of the Noun used in the relevant collection.

Place on display on separate listings so that students ...

Class Pet  We have a class pet( stuffed furry animal of some kind) and each weekend a student takes home the pet and then writes a recount of what they did together ...

Spaceman for Spaces between words  At the beginning of each year I had a great deal of trouble getting my Kinders to leave spaces between words. So we invented a "spaceman".

He was a ...

Print Walk  From early year One I have always encouraged the children to go on a print walk around the room.

They take their writing book and pencil with them and ...

Teaching Writing with Year Four Children  I love teaching writing in my learning support role. I took a whole class for planning and editing for a six week block.

The children weren't motivated ...

Writing lesson   I was just browsing quickly through the lesson plans section and thought I would add a lesson I did last year in my first Block.

My supervising teacher ...

Using Photos for Creative Writing  I often run out of ideas for writing topics and struggle to find fun interesting inspirational ideas.

I began looking through various magazines and ...

White board Handwriting and Writing Practice  I have found portable white board activities fantastic for the early years. The children love using them and they are great for practicing those early ...

Morning Sign In Book  Have a 'sign in' book at the classroom entrance.

Place a column with all the children's names written correctly on one side of a page and a column next ...

Writing Briefcase  When I taught Kindergarten I used a writing briefcase to promote the value of writing and the link between school and home for the student.

I actually ...

Writing Centre  I am a kindergarten teacher and wanted to get away from the "traditional" journal writing session to enable my students to write freely, but also have ...

Handwriting Practice, Practice and More Practice  Having been out of 'hands-on' teaching for a while now, I still take a very keen interest in what is going on in the Teaching arena.

My son has just ...

Puzzle Story Writing Idea  Integrate a fine motor/manipulative activity with literacy.

Have students complete an interesting puzzle with a good picture and lots of features to ...

Interactive Writing  Re: K-3 Teacher Resources Newsletter - October 2009 - Interactive Writing.....

A 5th grade teacher in my building is using this process. She asked ...

What Happens to Helvetica Hippo  I love the book "The Escape of Marvin the Ape" by Caralyn Buehner, Mark Buehner (Illustrator)!

It follows the ape, Marvin through his day 'out' of ...

Handwriting the fun way  Hi, I was always finding that my students were not keen to do handwriting, particularly with pages from a photocopy book. I wanted to make handwriting ...

Short Story Starters  When it is time for storywriting, we find that without fail we have some students that will say they don't know what to write about.

We tried giving ...