Writing leads

My kids really struggled with writing strong leads for their personal narratives. I found this awesome anchor chart on Pinterest to give them some more ideas of how to write an exciting lead. I wanted the kids to have those ideas right in front of them as they were writing to remind them to really think about their leads. I also try to make a smaller version of all of my anchor charts so the kids can add it to their interactive notebooks. It is great to be able to refer back to the anchor…

Teaching narrative writing is one of my favorite things! Teaching writing is a challenge–but when students get engaged and can be creative, it’s our way to hook them! If you want to read about some GREAT narrative teaching tips, head over to my blog post on Upper Elementary Snapshots. Check out my ideas about teaching […]

I wanted to share an anchor chart I have used to teach story starters. I love these little doodles- I sometimes find my boys trying to copy them in their notebooks, so I guess when I am squeezing in some instruction with cartoon doodles, we all win :) Here is my (long!) chart- I end up having to put two together, but it's not too bad and you could use smaller handwriting: They are inspired by one of my most favorite teachers online: Beth Newingham. Her site was what initially inspired me to…

Looking to help your students write better leads? Grab my lead examples, anchors, mentor texts, and activities for FREE. Also, check out this post and see how I break down lead writing into an easy-to-understand process. Your elementary students will love learning how to hook readers.

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We recently finished our writing unit on personal narratives. As with all of my units, I like to take a little time to reflect on what went well, as well as what I would like to do differently. Today I'd like to share my thoughts and strategies on narrative leads. We spent quite a bit of time discussing how to compose narrative leads that hook readers. Overall, I was very pleased with the leads my students used for their narratives.

When teaching narrative writing in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade, there are so many writing skills to cover. They range from creating a sequence of events (beginning, middle, and end) to more difficult

Common Core Writing Leads anchor chart (talking, sound effect, action, question) // The Go To Teacher

The Sentence Game Let’s face it, writing is hard. It takes lots and lots of practice to master the many skills a writer needs. But practice can be boring. Not now! I’ve created a sentence writing game your kids will love. With this game they’ll write sentence after sentence without complaining, because it’s a game. It’s very simple, but practices very essential skills- capitalization, punctuation, grammar, and spelling. The game can be played with 2 or more players. There’s even a way to…

Calling all upper elementary writing teachers, this completely FREE opinion writing starter kit will help you teach or review opinion writing with your 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students. This set inclues an opinion writing anchor chart, modeled writing with coordinating guiding questions to help you teach this genre, student reference page and prompt project to get you started! You will love this free opinion writing printable set! Click today to grab it and it to your writing lesson plans!