Writing Education Articles for Teachers

As teachers, we are always looking for ways to add an exciting spin or creative twist on subject matter that has the potential to become mundane and ordinary. Do you have friends who are elementary teachers in other parts of the country? Or even just in another district? How about overseas? Every...

You’re about to announce a written assignment and could likely accurately predict the responses you’re about to receive. A fair number of faces are about to drop, if not share their disapproval verbally. At least several pairs of eyes will reflect fear. Only a small number of teenagers before you...

E.L. Doctorow once said, “Planning to write is not writing. Outlining is not writing. Researching is not writing. Talking to people about what you are doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing.” With the recent rollout of the Common Core standards, as well as the first year of SBAC testi...

A.A. Milne said, “If we always do what we’ve always done, we’ll get what we’ve always got.” This is the literary version of Einstein’s definition of insanity; “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” In reality, society is changing, learning styles are changing,...

Don't let a lack of funds stifle your creativity! The next time you think of a terrific project or addition to your classroom, don’t let funding be the deciding factor. Be proactive in your approach. Teachers come up with wonderful and creative ways to challenge their students, but they ofte...

There is a very fine, yet incredibly necessary distinction between teaching children how to write and teaching children how to become writers. After many years and many different writing programs, I realized that I had always focused my teaching on the end product. I spoke to my young writers abo...

Writing ought to be fun, but for many people, it is not. Typically, we most enjoy the things we do well and conversely, we tend to excel at the things we enjoy. Both history of success and pleasure while engaging in an activity lead to increased confidence in our ability to shine in a particular ...

No one can deny the craziness of the English language. Derived from a plethora of cultural origins, even basic words break conventional spelling patterns. There is no easy way to explain to a five-year-old why white is spelled with ite and night is spelled ight. In my classroom, they are simply c...

When children begin writing fictional stories, they typically include one or two characters who embark on some sort of journey during which they encounter a few obstacles. These obstacles string along the story until the characters finally reach their goal or destination. This is a fine start, bu...

Revise and edit, edit and revise—words that many young writers hear over the course of their academic writing career. At the beginning of the year, my sixth-grade writers attempt to combine revising and editing, and the process takes only about fifteen minutes at best. Teaching them the differenc...

Have you noticed that your students’ writing isn’t particularly thrilling? That their short, similarly constructed sentences aren’t capturing your attention? Spend a class period conducting a mini-lesson to actively practice adding sentence variety. It is, after all, a teachable skill with some a...

Enjoying time away from the hustle and bustle of the school year is well deserved; however, it’s important to keep the creativity ignited for the next year of learning. Summer break writing doesn’t have to be a structured, assignment-based task. Taking time to observe, discover, and record the se...

Envision writer Ernest Hemingway sitting at a table, joking and laughing with friends and colleagues. Jovial conversation turns to money-making opportunity when his friends bet that he can not write his life story in only a few words. Hemingway, a master of brevity, immediately grabs a napkin and...

With the 2013-2014 school year being a target year for Common Core implementation, the teaching team here at Lesson Planet recognizes the need to help our learning community further familiarize themselves with the Common Core writing standards. Beginning June 24th and running for six consecu...

As the school year comes to a close, students will appreciate an opportunity to wrap up the year and reflect on their experiences. This especially applies for those who are graduating, whether they are graduating from elementary school, middle school, or high school; they will be moving on to a n...