Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing

If you're looking for a starting point for creating a character, you will enjoy this character interview worksheet.

Learn about scaffolds you can add to help your ESL students as they are writing about photographs. Photographs offer great insperation for ELLs to write...

In this blog post, read about my best teaching strategies to teach writing narrative endings. Grab all the freebies to help you teach.

Hi! Sweet Friends, it's Peggy from Primary Flourish. I hope you are having a refreshing summer! I want to share with you a fun, and better yet, effective way to get your little writers to slow down enough to edit their own writing! Just call the COPS! I just love acronyms! They really help anchor concepts in the students' (and teacher's :)) minds! As you can see in the posters, each letter in COPS reminds students important details they need to check for in their writing. This pack includes all you need to teach your students to do their own editing! Use these 4 Posters with kid-friendly 'I Can Statements' to introduce COPS to your students, then leave them up in your classroom for easy reference through out the year. Students love flip books, oh my! This is a fun, interactive way to cement the editing concepts in their minds. I have included this printable for students to practice 'Patrolling with the COPS'. A blank copy is also included, so you can make up your own sentence for your students. I like to use this as a task in their morning work. Notice the COPS boxes to the left of each sentence - that is for students to put tally marks (or numbers) of how many of those edits needed to be made in that sentence. This helps them s.l.o.w. down and actually reflect on their writing. Now, we know there will be some little 'speeders' that rush though their writing without 'patrolling their writing! That's when they get a ticket! Just put a check under the area that need editing and attach it to the writing that needs editing. The student then needs to look back to find and correct their own writing. You can get 'Edit Writing with COPS' for just a DOLLAR for the next three days! July 27, 2015 July 28, 2015 July 29, 2015 Just click here or on one of the pictures above to snag this TEACHER DEAL! Keep soaking up the sweetness of summer!

Steal these for your writing unit!

Do you hate to teach poetry? Do you want your students to learn and enjoy poetry? Try these simple ways to learn how to teach poetry...

This is a great writing exercise to practice writing a narrative. Keywords and drawings are given.

Learn how to write a magic system with examples by following these 18 easy steps. Whether you’re creating a hard or soft magic system.

Formal_Informal_English (Formal Writing Expressions) (Formal letter Practice) (For and Against essay) (how to write a film review) (film review) (film review) (opinion essay) (a magazine article) …

I have so much to share with you about writing interventions, but first things first: WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE NEW BLOG DESIGN?!?!? Please share your thoughts! Every year, I meet lots of middle schoolers who struggle with writing. And every year, I play around with lots of different interventions to meet their needs. Last year, I made establishing sound writing interventions one of my big goals. I spent lots of time (and money!!) on resources that I could use, and by about March, I had something that I thought I was pretty happy with. This year, I'm starting off with those interventions that worked so well last year and I couldn't be happier with the results! In fact, I'm so pleased with how they are working, I feel confident enough to share my practice with my blog readers. I can say that these are definitely KID TESTED, TEACHER APPROVED!! Creating a Time and Space for Intervention within your Classroom I teach by myself. There are no aides, special ed teachers, BSI teachers... just little, ol' me! So, when I want to create and manage small groups, I'm on my own. This is hard. It would be so much easier if there was another adult in the room to help, but there is not, so I just have to deal! It's work, but it absolutely can be done! A few weeks ago, I wrote about the Power of Bell-Ringers. Establishing a quiet and smooth transition into writing class is a great way to get started, but it also provides me with a window of time where I can pull a small group! By mid-October, my bell-ringer time gets extended to 15 minutes. The kids get started immediately and are clear on the expectations during this time. Now the environment for working with small groups is set: the room is quiet and engaged, allowing me to focus my time on the handful of kids in my group. I pull my kids to a table that I have set up in front of our classroom library. I have a "teacher station" at one end where I do my instruction. I usually stream some jazz or piano music during this time so my group doesn't distract the rest of the class. Establishing Interventions In my district, by middle school, there are no longer district-mandated interventions in place. There are no clear resources for teachers to use or personnel to help. So, when we have a struggling reader or writer in 7th or 8th grade, it's the job of the classroom teacher to meet their needs. In my tenure of working with middle schoolers, I've found that there are two types of students who need more support than my writing curriculum provides (and please remember... I am not a researcher/specialist/writer of books/etc. I'm just a teacher, like you, who loves my job, tries to do the best by my kids, and is compulsively reflective about what I see happening... to me, teachers are the best EXPERTS, but I know that we are hesitant these days to trust a "lowly" teacher and rather find ourselves relying on big publishers and educational researchers to show us best practices... I don't have lots of "data" to support what I'm sharing with you... just my actual observations I've made while working with real, live kids in an average classroom setting!!). Type One: Students Who Struggle with Structure The first type of students who need intervention are those who struggle with structure. These are the kids that can't organize their thoughts in a way a reader could follow. They simply write whatever their brain thinks at the time. They can generally stick with a broad topic, but because they are just writing whatever pops into their head at the time, there are lots of places where their writing veers off track and becomes confusing. Here is an example written by a former student struggling with structure: My dog Henry is my most special treasure. He is always there for me whenever I need him in sad times and happy. In many ways, he's my best friend. He has brown fur and a white chest. He is such a good dog to have around when you are sad because he always knows just how to cheer you up. His eyes are brown, like a Hersey bar. His favorite toy is a yellow tennis ball. Once he almost got hit by a car chasing the ball down the street. I have loved him ever since he was a puppy and we first got him. I was only 4-years old when that little ball of fluff was brought home by my parents to be best friends. His soft fur is always so smooth and warm when you pet him while watching TV on a cold night. He is my best friend and that is why he is my special treasure [sic]. This student is clear about his topic - his dog, Henry - but he cannot organize his thoughts. He is thinking about his dog and writes down everything he knows about his buddy exactly as it comes to his mind. Clearly, he has mechanical and conventional skills, and you can see evidence of where he is practicing what we learned in our mini-lessons and from studying our mentor pieces. But, because there is no organization, it is too difficult to follow and all of the skills he has are lost to the untrained, teacher-eye. Kids who write like this need an intervention that focuses on structure and organization. Typically, I LOATHE teaching step-by-step process writing, but in cases like this, I'm left with little choice. The lessons that I put together for kids in need of this intervention consist of learning how to write a well-organized paragraph. Together, we will work on writing topic sentences, creating strong and clear supporting sentences, and finish up with writing a closing that sticks with our reader. My favorite plans for this type of writing come from Michael Friermood. His Fact-Based Opinion Writing products are geared toward teaching elementary students (grades 3-5) how to write a good opinion paragraph, and they are PERFECT for my struggling 7th graders. They also lack a lot of the "cutesy" images that you find with products for this age group, so my big kids don't feel like I'm making them do "baby stuff." (I do not use the stationary he provides for the final writing piece... it's adorable, but it would be pushing in with my kids! So, we just do our paragraph writing in our intervention notebooks!) My plan is to pull the intervention group for one week (at 15 minutes a pop, this comes to 1 1/4 hours of learning). Long before I ever pull a group, I work hard to make sure that my lesson is broken down into five succinct 15-minute increments. Since time is so precious, you need to make sure not one minute is wasted! I can say that it takes me much longer to plan for a small-group lesson than a 50-minute whole-class lesson because efficiency is so crucial. The first few times you plan a small-group lesson, don't be surprised if your timing is mess. It definitely takes practice to be an effective small-group instructor! After their week is up, then I send them back to completing the bell-ringer at the start of class. I will watch them closely and conference with them lots to make sure that I am seeing a transfer of skills. If I don't, then it is likely that I will put them back in an intervention group in a few weeks to practice again. This intervention model will continue all year. Right now, I have 8 intervention students in one writing class, and 6 in another. By the end of the year, those number should reduce to 3-4 and 2-3. Never in all my years of working with small groups, have I had 100% of my intervention students "graduate" from small group. Don't be frustrated if this is the case! If you can improve 50-60% of those kids, then consider that a huge success!! Type Two: Students Who Struggle with Motivation The next group of kids that I work with are those who struggle with motivation. These are the students who complain a lot about not having anything to write about, spend more time doodling or coloring in their notebook than writing, and who will write the absolute bare minimum for any writing assignment. Many times, these kids produce too little for me to gauge whether or not they also need help with structure. But typically, once I can get them writing, they will likely find themselves in a small group for structure work :) Come October, after we've spent lots of lots of time list writing, the kids who are still struggling to get their pencils moving find themselves using a very special Interactive Writer's Notebook called "Musings from a Middle Schooler." This product contains loads of interactive writing pages that will motivate even the most reluctant writers. The pages can be printed out and glued into a marble notebook. (Most often, I'll have the kids create their own... I don't always have them use all the pages, rather I let them pick and choose the ones they like!). Cover Table of Contents page Table of Contents cont. and an "All About Me" page "My Life Story in Two Pages" My Favorite Thing Comics I created this project just last school year and it's been an absolute smash! The kids (especially my boys!) LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it! In absolutely no time, they are writing like crazy. And once I can get their pencils moving it doesn't take me long to get them producing some actual pieces. I don't necessarily pull these kids and work with them in a small group. The first few days, we will assemble our books all together at the back table, but then they go right back to the big group. Rather than do the bell-ringer with the rest of the class at the start of the period, they will work in their "Musings" notebooks. Fifteen minutes of that is usually enough to get them into writing mode for the rest of class. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * So, that's how I make writing intervention work in my classroom. Phew!! That was long, folks!! I apologize for my wordiness and I am grateful if you stuck it out until the end! Also, I'm sure that I've left out some crucial details of my practice, so please do not hesitate to ask me any questions you still have! Do you have any good intervention tips or strategies that work for you? I'd love to hear about them. Drop me a comment and share! Happy Teaching!!

The Best Anchor Charts for your ELA classroom all together in one place! You will find outlines to utilize in Reading Literature, Reading Informational, Writing and Language. Explained in this blog post is about the purpose of utilizing anchor charts in your daily instruction. Along with tips to organize your charts. Below is a collection […]

The setting of a story performs the vital task of transporting the reader into the story. Download this worksheet (PDF) Story Settings The questions in this 2-page story setting worksheet can help you hone in on the details of your character’s environment. Does the scene take place indoors or out? Is the space light or…

Editor’s Note: The following article continues Johan Liedgren’s series on storytelling and its role in crafting narrative in design, advertising and film. On New Research Suggesting There Are Only …

Show, Don't Tell: A Writing Minilesson! This blog post focuses on teaching students to write showing sentences instead of telling sentences. It includes an anchor chart and a FREE Bingo game!

This past week, we learned about synonyms. The kids really grasped the concept by mid-week! I am excited to see them start using synonyms...

This 3-part character conflict worksheet can help put your character in trouble... and pull them out of it!

Download This Worksheet (PDF) Your antagonist* is tired of being compared to your protagonist. Give him / her some love with this worksheet. While this worksheet has been designed for antagonists who are characters, remember that this needn’t always be the case! Also works for your real-life antagonists… More Ways to Understand Your Antagonist Protagonists…

A plot hole is a gap, contradiction or inconsistency in a storyline that goes against the internal logic of the story. It's the kind of slip-up that makes switched-on readers say, "Wait, hang on a second!"

In this blog post, read about my best teaching strategies to teach writing narrative endings. Grab all the freebies to help you teach.

Tumblr Thread: The Extremely Suspicious Not-Mob Guy - The internet has generated a huge amount of laughs from cats and FAILS. And we all out of cats.

Metaphors and similes: without them poetry would be prosy, religion would be non-existent and opiates would be indescribable. A good metaphor is more than a literary device; it can shift someone’s entire perception of a situation, often with memorable and lasting effect. Metaphors and similes are slippery in syntax and connotation, and I have a…

Download This Worksheet (PDF) How to Kill a Character All writers become murderous sooner or later, but it’s important to kill your character in the right way, at the right time and for the right reason. I hope this worksheet will help you premeditate the perfect coup de grâce.

Writing Worksheet – Partners in Love (PDF) One of the best signs that I’ve heard that attests to a successful couple, is that they are more together than the sum of their parts. The equations of partnership are varied, of course. Is it 2 ➔ 1, or 1+1=1, or 1≏1=0, or 1≡1, or 1=½+½ or…

Check out these teaching materials for upper elementary students including task and reference cards on writing narrative hooks.

Are you a homeschooling mom? Tricia Goyer shares 6 activities you can do with your writers' club

45 free online classes you can take (and finish) by the end of this year

Our Fantasy Classes Generator is here to jumpstart your imagination. This clever tool goes beyond the typical fighter-mage-rogue trio.

I LOVE saving figurative language until June - it's such a fun language unit ... and perfect for our "dreaming of summer brains". We finished up our EQAO testing mid week, and this onomatopoeia activity was the perfect break from testing. How fun is that??? Students chose two contrasting colours - one for the background and one for the word and border "bursting out of the page". They also needed newspaper (cut just a fraction smaller that the "bursting out of the page border" and glued the newspaper on top. They glued their word on top of that (we had brainstormed a lot of onomatopoeia words, but for some reason most of them chose SPLAT for their word). I also had them do a little shading under their letters for that little extra POP (see, I know some onomatopoeia words, too). ;) I had seen this awesome idea on Pinterest and followed it back to Artisan des Arts. Her examples are FANTASTIC!! We also wrote simile poems this week. I found a little template HERE for the students to use for their rough copies. When students were finished their templates, I had them write out their good copies, and illustrate a few lines with a small image. I hung these up, too ... LOVING our bulletin board switch up ... even this late in the school year!!! (I have two of these "smART class" bulletin boards side by side in the classroom. 15 more school days left ... I think I can ... I think I can ... Happy Friday!!!

Expanding Sentences Anchor Chart and Mini-Lesson

Doug Savage's Savage Chickens "comics" are a single-frame comic drawn on a sticky note that illustrates the life of chickens whose experiences reveal the "savage" truths of the human existence. Teaching satire in secondary ELA is a high-interest and humorous way to engage studen

How to Write Gallifreyen: Many people watch doctor who, whether they are fans or not. In this instructable, I will show you the basics of writing Circular Gallifreyen.So keep reading and enjoy ;)

Sarah Andersen knows what it is to be a bookworm. Here are 3 times she nailed it in her webcomic.

This editing checklist helps you find and track common errors or weaknesses in your manuscript. Fill it in yourself, or send it on to beta readers!

A simple worldbuilding worksheet to help you create a magic system for your story world - worldbuilding questions for the people, the mechanics & the world.

Find the perfect word and tell us exactly how you feel.