Writing

5 Ways to use Writing Prompts with Pictures

Teaching writing can be difficult, but today I am going to share with you five fun ways to use writing prompts with pictures to enhance your writing instruction! Read on… My second graders LOVE using writing prompts with pictures! I try to use them in my writing instruction as much as possible. Picture writing prompts are such a fun, visual way to help your students write! Here are 5 ways that you can use Picture Writing Prompts in your classroom! 1. Use Writing Prompts with Pictures in your Writing Lessons Writing lessons are always more fun when you use writing

Writing Journal Ideas for Elementary Students Part 1

I LOVE using Writing Journals with my students. So much, that I am doing a blog series about Writing Journal Ideas for Elementary Students! Welcome to Part 1! Please note that this post does contain Amazon Affiliate links. If you purchase anything from Amazon through these links I receive a small commission at no cost to you!Keep reading and don’t forget to grab your freebie! Creating Writing Journals To get started you will need some writing journal ideas of the type of journals that you want to create for or with your students. There are so many ways that

Mentor Texts for Writing: Teaching Syllables and Haiku!

I LOVE teaching my students to write poetry! I love writing poetry myself. Haiku is my favorite type of poem to teach and to write! I would like to share with you just how I go about teaching this in my classroom and the books that I use to as Mentor Texts for teaching Haiku Writing! I have teamed up with some other amazing teachers from the Reading Crew to bring you this fun hop with great giveaways and freebies! This post contains affiliate links for Amazon. If you purchase through my link I get a small commission with no cost to

Mentor Text for Writing Acrostic Poems

April is poetry month! So over the next few weeks, my Mentor Text Monday posts will all be Mentor texts for teaching poetry! This post contains affiliate links for Amazon. By purchasing an item on the Amazon site using these links, I will receive a small commission on your purchase (with no extra cost to you). For more information about my Disclosure Policy, please visit this link! I love teaching poetry! There is so much freedom in writing short bursts of texts, that don’t always have to follow the “rules”, or have strict rules so you have to be really creative

Monster Menu! Fun October Writing Activity and a Freebie!

Hello! Did you come here looking for a Fun October Poem and Writing Activity? Maybe you just came looking for a great Halloween Writing Freebie?Either way, you are in luck! This is a revamped post. It originally was posted on 10/24/14! Things didn’t quite work out the way I planned on Friday, so we decided to make Monster Menus! Each year about this time we read a poem called If a Giant Monster. I am not sure who wrote the poem, but it is about inviting monsters in to have something to eat. Of course, this lead to a discussion about what Monsters eat.

Monster Menu! Halloween writing project with a freebie!

Things didn’t quite work out the way I planned on Friday, so we decided to make Monster Menus! Each year about this time we read a poem called If a Giant Monster. I am not sure who wrote the poem, but it is about inviting monsters in to have something to eat. Of course, this lead to a discussion about what Monsters eat. It got a little grisly, but we had some good giggles. We also talked about what monsters might pay with if they had “monster money”. Here is a picture of our brainstorming session: I was love doing

Writing Workshop Wednesday: Mini-lesson 1: Where do you get ideas?

Thank you to Educasong, Kimberley Geswein, and Creative Clips! I used their wonderful products to make my button!Okay! Onto Writer’s Workshop stuff!I LOVE teaching writing. Am I really that good at it?I don’t think that I really am, but I enjoy it, so it makes it seem like I am good at writing. 🙂 I have been working really hard this year to try to do my mini-lessons in a sequence that makes sense. It makes sense to me at least! Of course I started with building stamina for Writer’s Workshop. If you are interested is seeing our daily routine

Classroom Snapshot! Writing Part 1: Our Writing Workshop Routine.

Thank you to Creative Clips and The Enlightened Elephant for the clipart and Kimberly Gerswin for the font for my button. Hello! Thanks so much for stopping by! Today I am starting my little series on the kinds of things that I do in my classroom. I thought that I would start with my favorite part of the day: Writer’s Workshop! I have been using some sort of Writer’s Workshop in my classroom ever since I started teaching (a while ago). This is what is working for me now. Of course, I am still tweaking and each year it changes

Looking for a new way to do writing prompts? Look no further…

Honestly I can’t tell you how excited I am about my newest product. As a teacher I love teaching writing, but it really isn’t the easiest thing to teach! “I don’t know what to write about” “How do you spell…” The list of excuses goes on and on and on… Well. In comes the Story Friends! This is a simple idea, with a ton of uses in the classroom.First, I printed the pages that I wanted to use, cut out and laminated the pieces and put a piece of magnetic tape of the back. The first time I used

Phew! Updating is hard work…

Hello all! I have been working all day on updating a few of my “older” products. I have learned so much since I started on TpT, so I am working on doing some updating! This is actually one of my best sellers and one of the things that I use the most in class! I added quite a few new pages, and now I have horizontal and vertical orientations to all of the pages! I also added several new line styles! This bad boy went from 14 pages to 36! Phew! My December “I’m Done!” Menu pack is updated just

Publishing student writing (classroom style!)

I wrote a post a short time back about publishing my student’s writing in my classroom (you can find that post here). I have always tried to do some sort of publishing in one fashion or another, but I have been working on it really hard this year. It is such a motivator for the kiddos. They are willing to put in the work because it is so cool to “publish” your book, read it in front of the class, and add it to our classroom library! They really get a kick out of watching me bind their books with

Coffee House Poetry!

Program I have mentioned in several of my previous blog posts about Coffee House Poetry and a few people asked me to tell them more! So, here we go! We did our Coffee House Poetry Celebration today and it was a hit! I have to say that this in not an original idea it comes from Debbie Miller’s wonderful book Reading with Meaning. (She has since come out with a second edition that I haven’t read yet, but it is on my wishlist!) As soon as we get back from Christmas vacation, we start our poetry writing unit. This is

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