It’s no secret that we think consistent quality writing practice is essential for students’ success. That’s why we created a paragraph of the week resource for our students. It holds us accountable to include writing each week in our curriculum in addition to more substantial argumentative writing assignments (you can read more about that here).
Additionally, we provide our students with sentence starters, transition words, and even some strong vocabulary to spice up their writing, along with brainstorming and writing space. Rubrics are included on each page for ease of grading.
This past year, we were so thrilled with the consistent writing practice our students were getting, and we often tied in mini lessons (sentence structure, strong leads, etc…) to ensure that their writing was improving over time. It was awesome to see the progress students made in their written expression when this resource was used over the course of our year together.
Here are just a few ideas of how you can use this resource in your own classroom:
- Print out the entire journal and bind for students to use throughout the year. (This is what we do!)
- Print out the prompts week by week and have students glue into their notebooks – collect the notebooks each Friday to read and grade.
- Display a quote and prompt on your whiteboard every Monday and have students write a journal response to share with the class. (What a great keepsake for students to have at the end of the semester or year with all their thoughts!)
- Assign a prompt to early finishers.
- Create a writing center with the quotes and prompts.
- Discuss the quotes and students’ answers to the corresponding questions aloud (whole class, small group, think-pair-share)
- Select one of the quotes and prompts each month to display on a bulletin board and showcase student writing.
- Using a hallway bulletin board that students and teachers have access to, display a new quote and prompt each month and have people interact with the board by writing in their thoughts (we’ve seen a Sharpie attached with string to the board work quite well to encourage responses)
- Home School Writing Activities
