Writing Teaching Resources
Teaching writing strategies and the writing process this school year? Explore a comprehensive collection of teacher resources for elementary and middle school ELA teachers — all created by teachers!
Stocked with graphic organizers, writing prompts, templates, worksheets and so much more, this collection of printable and digital activities is designed to help you as you help your students become more effective communicators and unleash their creativity and imagination.
Save time on lesson planning with resources that have been through a careful review process by an expert member of our teacher team to ensure they're ready for your classroom and your students!
Are you looking for tips and tricks to add to your teacher toolkit this school year? Read on for a primer from our teacher team, including engaging activities for teaching writing in elementary and middle school and a look at some of the different writing strategies your students will need to learn.
11 Writing Strategies Kids Should Know by the End of Middle School
We can't talk about teaching kids to write without talking about the different writing strategies that can help them do just that!
When it comes to teaching our students to become confident writers who articulate their ideas effectively, here are some of the strategies our teacher team prioritizes:
1. Brainstorming
Brainstorming is something we often do in the classroom, and it's a crucial part of learning to generate the ideas that will drive students' writing as they progress through their educational journey. Kids should know how to create a list of potential topics or points related to a particular writing assignment.
With younger students, this is often done as a whole group by writing ideas and points on chart paper. In upper grades, students transition over to using text-based materials to generate ideas and talking points.
2. Outlining
Before diving directly into any assignment, our students should be able to create a structured framework or outline. Teaching students how to create this outline will help them organize their thoughts and arguments for penning their essays, reports and research papers.
3. Using Graphic Organizers
Technically graphic organizers are classroom tools, so you may not think of their use as a writing strategy per se. However, learning to use these tools is another means of providing kids with the tools they need to organize their ideas and information before they sit down to write.
These organizers are particularly useful for expository writing — students can use them to outline main ideas, supporting details, and transitions.
Students can also take advantage of story maps when they are working on narrative writing to plot the key elements of a story, such as characters, setting, conflict, rising action, climax and resolution.
Graphic organizers such as the OREO strategy and hamburger paragraph are also great tools for students to use when working with opinion and persuasive texts.
4. Freewriting
Writer's block is the enemy of creativity, and it can easily frustrate young students who don't know where to begin.
When students freewrite, they write continuously without worrying about grammar or punctuation. This writing strategy can be extremely freeing — hence the name! — and helps frustrated writers move past that writer's block, generating fresh ideas.
5. Peer Editing
Learning to review and provide constructive feedback on each other's work is a great writing strategy to employ in your classroom to help students improve their writing quality and enhance their editing skills.
The strategy allows your students to learn from one another, and it arms them with an important tool they can use well into the future — calling on peers to provide a critical eye to a piece of writing.
6. Using Sensory Language
Working on descriptive writing? With this writing strategy, students engage the reader's senses through vivid and sensory language to create a more immersive experience.
7. Including Transitions and Connectives
As students become more proficient in the writing process, learning to use transitional words and phrases allows them to create smooth transitions between sentences and paragraphs. This strategy makes their writing more coherent and polished.
8. Incorporating Evidence
In persuasive, opinion, and expository writing, students are taught to support their claims with evidence and examples to strengthen their arguments.
It takes some practice to train your students to use evidence in their writing, so it's often a good idea to start with something simple, like the R.A.C.E.S. strategy.
9. Crafting a Thesis Statement
In expository, opinion, and persuasive writing, crafting clear and concise thesis statements that summarize the main point or argument of their essay helps students be more focused and organized in their writing. This strategy can also have the effect of empowering students to express their ideas confidently and persuasively.
10. Incorporating Introductions and Conclusions
With this strategy, students practice crafting effective introductions and conclusions that grab the reader's attention and leave a lasting impression.
11. Following a Revision Checklist
Teaching your students to use a revision checklist is a strategy that will help them be more self-reflective, evaluating their own writing against the checklist criteria and becoming more aware of their strengths and weaknesses.
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Rhetorical Device Definitions – Match-Up Worksheet
Have students match the rhetorical devices with their definitions using this simple one-page worksheet.
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Animals That Adapt - Research Project & Report
Strengthen your students' understanding of conducting research with an Animal Adaptations research project.
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Building Strong Sentences Teaching Presentation
Share this 15-slide teaching presentation with your students to help them understand the key grammar concepts of compound sentences,coordinating conjunctions and clauses.
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Coordinating Conjunction Word Mat
Boost your students’ writing skills by giving them access to this coordinating conjunctions word mat during language arts lessons.
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Coordinating Conjunctions Worksheet
Distribute this coordinating conjunctions worksheet to help your students practice joining clauses with conjunctions to form compound sentences.
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Subordinating Conjunctions (Cause and Effect) Interactive Activity
Use this interactive digital activity to help students identify cause and effect subordinating conjunctions, and construct sentences using this part of speech.
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Subordinating Conjunctions for Contrast Interactive Activity
Assign this multiple choice subordinating conjunctions for contrast interactive activity for your students to correctly identify this type of conjunction in given sentences.
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Subordinating Conjunctions Worksheet
Use this worksheet to enable students to practice identifying and constructing sentences using subordinating conjunctions.
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Subordinating Conjunctions (for Time) Interactive Activity
Assign this multiple choice subordinating conjunctions for time interactive activity for your students to correctly identify this type of conjunction in given sentences.
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Subordinating Conjunctions Task Cards
Use this set of 24 task cards to help students practice identifying and constructing sentences using subordinating conjunctions.
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Alphabet Writing Rhymes - Teaching Slides
Use these fun alphabet writing rhymes to help students learn to write the letters of the alphabet.
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A Letter to My Teacher Activity Sheets
Get to know your students a bit better using a ‘Letter to Teacher’ template.
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Inspiring Story Starters - Task Cards
Get your students writing during Read Across America week with this set of inspirational narrative story starter task cards.
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Authors Who Inspire - Speechwriting Task
Research and celebrate an inspiring author during Read Across America Week with this speech-writing task.
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Subordinating Conjunctions Posters
Display this colorful and informative subordinating conjunctions poster set to remind your students of the functions and types of subordinating conjunctions!
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Subordinating Conjunctions (for Conditions) Interactive Activity
Use this interactive digital activity to help students identify conditional subordinating conjunctions, and construct sentences using this part of speech.
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Subordinating Conjunctions Game Show Interactive Activity
Use this interactive digital activity to assist your students in practicing identifying and constructing sentences using subordinating conjunctions in a fun way!
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Subordinating Conjunctions Board Game
Use this set of 24 task cards to help students practice identifying and constructing sentences using subordinating conjunctions.
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Coordinating Conjunctions Task Cards
Use this set of 24 task cards to reinforce students' understanding of coordinating conjunctions and building compound sentences.
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Exploring and Building Narrative Characters PowerPoint
A 14 slide editable PowerPoint template to use when teaching younger students about how to build a character for a narrative text.
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Christmas Singular and Plural Noun Worksheets
Review plural noun rules and add some holiday fun to your Language Arts lessons with a set of printable plural and singular noun worksheets.
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1st Grade Punctuation - Christmas Task Cards
Use these 1st Grade Punctuation activity cards to practice using ending punctuation and identifying declarative, interrogative, and exclamatory sentences.
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2nd Grade Language Arts Worksheets - Christmas Editing Practice
Practice correcting capitalization and punctuation errors with a set of Printable Christmas Editing worksheets for 1st and 2nd Grade.
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Christmas Writing Center - Types of Sentences for 2nd Grade
Help your students answer “What Type of Sentence Is This?’ with a printable Christmas sorting activity on the 4 types of sentences.
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Christmas Sentence Correction Worksheets
Edit and correct capitalization and punctuation errors with a set of Christmas Fix the Sentence worksheets.
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Christmas Board Game - 1st Grade Punctuation
Engage students by having them play a Christmas board game, refining their abilities to use correct punctuation at the end of sentences.
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Christmas Interactive: Singular and Plural Nouns
Practice using singular and plural nouns with a fun Christmas-themed digital resource.
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Holiday Adjective Worksheet Pack
Have some festive fun using printable Christmas adjective worksheets to practice describing nouns.
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Singular or Plural? Christmas Noun Sort
Help your students determine if words are singular or plural with a fun Christmas-themed noun sorting center.
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3rd Grade English Worksheets - Christmas Printables
Add some Christmas spirit to your December grammar lessons with a printable pack of Christmas-themed 3rd-grade English worksheets.
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Summer Santa on Vacation - Christmas Writing Prompts
Inspire hilarious Christmas narratives with a printable set of Santa on Vacation writing prompt worksheets.
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Christmas Writing Prompt Dice Game - Roll-a-Story
Roll a Christmas Writing Prompt and write a fun Christmas story with our printable Christmas Dice activities.