What kinds of fun writing projects do you do with ...

Hi Yolanda!

 I paired my ten year olds up with two schools, one from Canada and one from Texas, USA, as pen pals. It's a great way to practice writing and they're also very enthusiastic about that. Apart from writing, they also practice reading that way. Or you can find them e-pals. That way they also learn how to use the Internet and write e-mails.

If you want something more regular, you can play HANGMAN (to revise or teach spelling, as well) or jumble them some words. Or what they also enjoy, is to take words out of a hat. The class is divided in two teams. Each child in each team takes a picture out of a hat and is supposed to write the word on the board. The winner is the team who has the most correctly written words. Or if they're good at writing, you can do a funny story with them. One child starts a story in a couple of sentences. He/she folds everything but the last line and passes the paper to the child on his/her right. The other child continues the story and again folds everything but the last line. When the last child finishes the story and you unfold the paper, usually it's very funny.

Hope this will help at least a bit.

Mirjana

Hi Yolanda

My name is Sheila and I work for ePALS. 

We offer moderated forums for our students to participate in, and many teachers use this as an informal writing activity, since students from around the world participate and the topics are really engaging.  Visit our Student Talk Forum at:  http://www.epals.com/tools/forum/forum.e?bo=69&at=db (and visit Global Issues or Culture for some great writing topics).  Or they can participate in our Book Club forum, again, another informal writing area where students discuss anything and everything book related.  http://www.epals.com/projects/book_club/

Hope this helps!

Sheila

One of the more fun things that I did with my fourth graders was at the beginning of the year, they were paired with one another and then using a list of questions written in a prior lesson on interviewing they ask each other the questions.

Once this was completed amist giggles and laughter, they wrote up an introduction and then use their writing to introduce their partner.  This can also be used to interview a family relative or neighbor or teacher and then write up the article about that person.

Another fun thing to do, have them write a letter to their favorite book character--discuss beforehand what they will be wanting to say--key words can be chalked on the board.  Make arrangements [not difficult] to send the letters off to the author of the book.  I found that many of the authors answered the letters and one year, one of the authhors came and visited the classroom.

Hi Yolanda,

  My students have done co-writing with other classes via email  and Blackboard.  We have written Circle stories or Add-on stories where one class, or a team of students, would correspond with another class or a team of students elsewhere in the world.   The writing topic is agreed upon by the teachers involved.  One group starts and emails it to the other group who need to continue the story.  It goes back and forth until the story is completed.

 It makes for very interesting discussions and writing as the students have to think about where to take the story after someone else has added on to it.

I have successfully done this with one and two other classes.  It is a wonderful way to get to know students from other countries and work together in a cooperative way to create a product together.

The finished story can then be published as a hard copy with hand drawn illustrations (scanned onto a Powerpoint presentation), a computer slide show in a program such as KidPix4, or as  an oral/pictoral show in a program such as Photostory3.  These can then be send via CD to the partner class(es) or over the net.

Good luck.

Elaine Ireland