Teaching kids to write well is a challenging task that often lends itself to formulaic approaches like the dreaded "five-paragraph essay." But although a topic like punctuation can seem inherently dry, it’s important to tap into gifted students’ passion for self-expression to help them attain the advanced levels of literacy increasingly necessary in today’s economy. Check out the following resources for creative ways to get students engaged.
- National Writing Project offers 30 Ideas for Teaching Writing—all of them creative, easy to implement, and tested in actual classrooms with great results.
- Flocabulary, a popular online learning platform, teaches students new vocabulary through educational hip-hop songs and videos.
- StudentPublishing.com has a Free Internet Storybook Program that gets kids excited about writing by giving them a paperback copy of their story.
- Students love the engaging writing activities in our book, Hot Fudge Monday: Tasty Ways to Teach Parts of Speech to Students Who Have a Hard Time Swallowing Anything to Do With Grammar.