Reading Rockets
Reading Rockets: Looking at Writing: Second Grade
In this section, you'll find writing assessment resources, writing strategies, and additional tip sheets for teachers and parents on how to help second graders build strong writing skills. You'll also find videos on teaching writing....
Reading Rockets
Reading Rockets: Looking at Writing: Kindergarten
In this section, you'll find writing assessment resources, writing strategies, and additional tip sheets for teachers and parents on how to help kindergarteners build strong writing skills. You'll also find video on teaching writing....
Reading Rockets
Reading Rockets: Looking at Writing: Pre K
In this section, you'll find writing assessment resources, writing strategies, and additional tip sheets for teachers and parents on how to help preschoolers build strong writing skills. You'll also find a video modeling classroom...
Khan Academy
Khan Academy: Art History: Cuneiform and the Invention of Writing
Article discussing early forms of writing in the Ancient Near East. Includes links to additional information.
Other
Design a Study: How to Teach Handwriting
Very specific advice on teaching the skill of handwriting to young children. Making correct letters, making letters the same size, and the slant of the letters are all stressed.
abcteach
Abcteach: Writing
[Free Registration/Login Required] These worksheets give beginning writers the opportunity to practice their skills. In downloadable and printable PDF format (requires Adobe Reader).
Khan Academy
Khan Academy: Activity: Evaluating Writing
Students can learn how to grade an essay with a rubric in this activity. The essay is a sample from Big History essay called "Early Earth". The goal of this activity is for students to understand the rubric so they can write their own...
The Newberry Library
Newberry Library: Daily Life in Early Modern France
Primary source documents are used in the exploration of the written word asks how handwritten documents shaped life in the early modern period and what can they tell us about the experiences of early modern people.
National Endowment for the Humanities
Neh: Edsit Ement: Reading Writing & 'Rithmetic in the One Room Schoolhouse
Comparing and contrasting are skills that are utilized in this lesson plan. Teacher resources and detailed activities will help the students learn about the schools in early America.
ReadWriteThink
Read Write Think: Writing Reports in Kindergarten
Lesson which provides three types of reports for early elementary students to share. These allow young students to see themselves as writers with something useful to contribute from an early age.
Other
Rubric: Six Trait Assessment for Beginning Writers
Teachers will find this rubric useful in the classroom as a means of assessing student writing skills. It has a printer friendly version.
Other
National Gallery, London: Take One Picture Literacy
This program encourages teachers to use paintings to teach literacy skills to primary age children. Here you can find a dozen examples of projects to try with your students that incorporate art and language arts.
Alabama Learning Exchange
Alex: Researching Mark Twain's Early Life and Experiences
This lesson requires students to use the Internet to research the early life of Mark Twain and the influence of his childhood experiences on his writing. The lesson includes letter writing, reading, role playing, and working in a group...
Louisiana Department of Education
Louisiana Doe: Louisiana Believes: Ela Guidebooks: Shared and Interactive Writing
This strategy helps learners refine their understanding of texts to meet the standards for reading and prepare for writing about texts by refining their writing and language skills. In early elementary, the writing that is produced can...
Able Media
Ctc: I, Caesar a Study of the Imperial Romans
This lesson plan provides semester-long activities in which students research and write about selected emperors who ruled Rome during different parts of its history.
ReadWriteThink
Read Write Think: Teaching Concepts of Letter and Word
A great resource for teachers introducing the concepts of "letters" and "words" to early elementary students. Uses the names of the students themselves as a starting place in learning these concepts. Great site.
ReadWriteThink
Read Write Think: Growing Readers and Writers With Help From Mother Goose
Contains plans for short, daily minilessons that use nursery rhymes to teach basic reading skills. In addition to objectives and standards, this instructional plan contains links to sites used in the lessons as well as assessment and...
ReadWriteThink
Read Write Think: Blogging in the Primary Grades? Yes, Indeed!
In this lesson, learners read blogs written by students their own age and learn to shape a well-thought-out response that addresses and answers the questions posed in the blog. Then, after reading, discussing, and deciding what makes a...
Free Reading
Free Reading: Rhyme Around Baseball Activity
An exciting version of baseball to build fluency in creating rhyming words. The classroom is divided into two teams; when one team is up to bat the first student is given a word family such as -at. They must create a rhyming word and...
ReadWriteThink
Read Write Think: Choosing the Right Book: Strategies for Beginning Readers
Students make purposeful choices for their reading materials, thinking about their reasons for reading a book and using strategies to match books to their abilities.
Reading Rockets
Reading Rockets: Teaching Reading: Expert Interviews
Learn from nationally known researchers and experts in literacy and early education. Topics include phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, spelling, comprehension, writing, summer learning, early childhood education, dyslexia, and more.
Reading Rockets
Reading Rockets: Goals for First Grade: Early Reading and Writing
Children go through certain phases of reading development from preschool through third grade- from exploration of books to independent reading. Find out what children at the first-grade phase should be able to do, and what teachers and...
Alabama Learning Exchange
Alex: Reading and Writing About Miss Moo
Lesson for early elementary and special education students utlizing the book Miss Moo Goes to the Zoo by Kelly Graves and graphic organizers to identify elements in a story (title, author, setting, characters, etc.). Students participate...
National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts: The Big Read: Wolff: Old School
Guide to Tobias Wolff's Old School, with historical information, author biographies, discussion questions, and a ten-lesson unit of study including activities, writing exercises, project ideas, and essay topics. A radio show, with...