Click on the titles below to link to fabulous websites to build and enforce WRITING skills.
Read or Write a Book Review - Do you love fantasy novels? Biographies? Mysteries? Sports? Have you ever read a book that was so amazing you told all your friends "you've GOT to read this!"? Here's your opportunity to share with other students what you are reading and to discover new books based on other kids' recommendations.
Story Starters - Generate a creative writing prompt and pick one of four formats to print your finished story. – replayable and you can print the end product. (k-5)
Read Write and Think -OUTSTANDING interactive tools that help students accomplish a variety of goals—from organizing their thoughts to learning about language—all while having fun. Here are some of the engaging, creative tools you’ll find:
Organizing & Summarizing – such as Timeline, Essay Map, Character Trading Cards, Story Map, Crossword Puzzles
Inquiry & Analysis – such as, Animal Inquiry and Fact Fragment Frenzy
Writing Poetry – such as, Diamante, Shape, and Acrostic Poems
Writing & Publishing – such as, Fractured Fairy tales, Comic Creator, Letter Generator, Persuasion Map, Flip Book
Learning About Language, such as, Word Wizard and Word Family Sort
Scholastic Games - Click on Writing Games (Grades 1-5)
Edit Dan’s Copy - Dan needs your help in editing his news report. You can pick Level 1 for capital letters and final punctuation or pick Level 2 for run-on sentences, quotation marks, and apostrophes.
Myth Brainstorming Machine - This machine was built to help you come up with ideas to write a myth of your own. Follow the directions, use your imagination, and have fun!
Clean Up Grammar at the Beach - Sort nouns and verbs into the right recycle bins. (Grades 2-5)
Try the Poetry Idea Engine - Get inspired to write poetry and learn the different forms. (grades 3-5)
Fish 'Em Up! - Are you ready to fishing for words to help your spelling? Use fishing rods to catch the correct words in the water. Do you need to double the consonant or change the Y? You'll find out if you Fish 'Em Up.
Write Me A Story - Provides a weekly story starter, then randomly selects five pieces to feature on the web. Kids and read and vote on stories too. Advertising displayed on this site. (Grades 1-5)
Bite Size Writing - English activities, games, tests and notes on writing, including how to write an argument, instructions, letters, comments and leaflets
Bite Size - Spelling and Grammar - English activities, games, tests and notes on spelling and grammar, including how to use punctuation, adjectives, adverbs and nouns.
Character Scrapbook - A reader's response activity to analyze the characters in any book. Grades 2-5
Write a Letter to the President - Anyone can write a letter to the President of the USA. Perhaps you have a question, a suggestion, an opinion, a request, a concern, or a criticism for the President. Or you may simply want to send your well-wishes the President. Use these hints to help you write a letter to the President.
Enchanted Learning -The following are printouts, crafts and writing activities that are designed to encourage and stimulate writing. The topics include writing short essays, writing reports, using graphic organizers to organize your thoughts before writing, printing and writing short books, and letter structure.
Spin and Spell - Choose a picture and spell the word. Grades 1-3
bookr - Create and share your own photobook using Flickr images
The Writing Fix - Since 2001, the Northern Nevada Writing Project has proudly sponsored this free-to-use website, which aims to "fix" those teachers who don't believe that writing instruction can be both the most enjoyable part of their teaching day. If you explore our website's pages, you will find prompts, lessons, and resources – including the 6 Traits. Here are a few of their activities to check out: Left-Brained Writing Prompts and Right-Brained Writing Prompts, Daily Journal Prompts.
PhotoStory 3 - PhotoStory 3 is a free download from Microsoft that can be used in digital storytelling projects with excellent results. Photostory requires Microsoft XP and Windows Media Player 10. You can create slideshows using your digital photos. Add special effects, soundtracks, and your own voice narration to your photo stories. Then personalize them with titles and captions. Share your stories – small file sizes make it easy to send your photo stories in an e-mail. Watch them on your TV, a computer, or a Windows Mobile-based device.
Photo Story Tutorial - Photo Story Demos
Poetry4Kids - Welcome to Kenn Nesbitt's poetry playground, where you will find lots of funny children's poems and poetry books, games, contests, lessons, discussion forums, and journals, plus a rhyming dictionary, streaming audio, school visit information and more.
Descriptive Words – A nice list of descriptive words broken into the following categories: Sound, Touch & Texture, Color & Visual Qualities, Smell, Pattern & Shape
Professor Garfield - A place where you can take your brain to the extreme. The mission of the nonprofit Professor Garfield Foundation is to raise the bar for creative learning in an interactive environment. This site's educationally sound games and activities let children explore new ways of learning, and should be as appealing as a plate of lasagna is to Garfield. The "Teachers' Lounge" link opens the door to the amazing resources for educators. It's filled with downloadable resource materials, lesson plans and links to other outstanding educational web sites. (K-8)
RIF Reading Planet Here are some interactive writing activities on this site:
Writer’s Block – Write stories with other kids! Once a month, you can read the beginning of a story and add your own ideas until the story is complete.
Poetry Splatter – Start by splattering words onto the screen and drag them into your poem.
Story Maker – Pick a scene, answer a few questions, and they’ll get you started on your own personalized story.
Writing Fun -The website Writing Fun helps students organize their writing using text organizers and a simple word processor. Examples and printables are provided with each organizer.
Scratch - Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art -- and share your creations on the web. It is designed to help young people develop 21st century learning skills by learning important mathematical and computational ideas, to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively. It is free to download and has extensive online resources. There is also a Scratchworkshop Wiki that has links to Scratch tutorials and resources that explain how to incorporate Scratch into your lesson plans. (Ages 8 and up.)
Suessville Story Maker – Create your own interactive story with the characters from Horton Hears a Who.
Story Starter - The Story Starter provides over 700 story starters for kids. All of the story starters are randomly created. This idea generator can be used for short stories, novels, plays, scripts, or just for fun.
My Hero Project - The mission of MY HERO is to use media and technology to celebrate the best of humanity and to empower young people to realize their own potential to effect positive change in the world. Their freely accessible, not-for-profit project is supported by visitors of all ages who share stories, art, and short films on our award-winning multimedia journal and digital library. Visitors are also invited to create web pages about the people who inspire them, providing thousands of children and their parents a chance to tell their stories. (Grades 2-12)
Goodnight Stories - Their goal is to provide a "child friendly" site where you can feel confident that your kids will have fun, without you worrying about the content. To encourage writing they have activites such as: Fill-in-a-story, Finish-a-story, and Send-a-story.
Kidspiration - Created for K-5 learners, Kidspiration develops thinking, literacy and numeracy skills using proven visual learning principles. In reading and writing, Kidspiration strengthens word recognition, vocabulary, comprehension and written expression. Here’s the link for downloading the trial of Kidspiration: http://inspiration.com/freetrial/index.cfm.
Lulu – Free your Ideas! This is an excellent site if you want to actually publish a real book with minimal fees. You can also share it and sell it worldwide or to just family and friends.
6+1 Traits of Writing The links below are to web sites that use 6+1 Traits of Writing. This is a writing framework ESUSD teachers use to build a common language, teach, and examine student writing.
http://www.edina.k12.mn.us/concord/teacherlinks/sixtraits/sixtraits.html
http://www.cyberspaces.net/6traits/
http://www.kent.k12.wa.us/KSD/IS/lang_arts/family/W_handbook/whandp1.htm
http://www.mukwonago.k12.wi.us/~olejnma/6_+_1_traits.htm