Power Up Writing in Your Classroom with these Writing Techniques

Helping our students learn to write across the curriculum and across genres is a powerful way to provide lifelong skills. We want to give students confidence and the desire to write, but making the transformation from idea to composition can be intimidating for many students. Making this transition smooth and accessible is a key component to building skilled writers. This article offers powerful strategies to teach writing techniques that will power up writing in your classroom.

Building Writing Skills

So how can we make writing a fun learning experience? Powerful teaching strategies are the answer! Students learn to write at very early stages. When they learn hold a pencil and recognize letters, students are in the earliest stages of becoming writers. As they form the letters, decode, and spell words, then use these words in increasingly longer sentences, students are beginning their writing journey.

One of the most important teaching strategies to build writing skills in the classroom is to provide daily writing time. Ideally, teachers can offer students multiple writing opportunities per day, allowing them to respond to learning through written responses and with other writing activities. Giving students time to write throughout their school day and across the curriculum allows them to encounter a variety of writing styles, genres, and purposes that will increase their confidence as their skills advance and expand. Using multiple purposes for writing will help students become at ease with writing techniques.

Teachers can model and offer examples of good writing. Reading aloud, demonstrating good writing by sharing their own solid sentences and writing samples, and offering their students examples of good writing are all ways teachers can help with the transition from copying to creating. Sharing good writing examples helps students to know what to look for in good writing and how to write well. Students will have an opportunity for a “soft” transition between learning to write and writing. This transition helps them to build confidence and stay motivated to continue.

Playing with words and using vocabulary games for fun can provide students with word banks and resources to use in writing. The greater number of words that students are familiar with using, the broader their writing will become. Playing word games provides a non-threatening way to build skills. As they expand their vocabulary and become more comfortable with vocabulary usage, students will build writing techniques.

Students need time to write often. Teachers should offer flexible options for writing opportunities along with required assignments. Allowing students the chance to edit and change their work free from grades and other critiques will allow writing techniques to build. So, while daily writing is important, incorporating non-graded writing that allows for modeling, creating, word games, new vocabulary, and frequent editing will give students the chance to grow as confident writers.

Strategies to Build Writing Techniques

Of course, students will be more apt to write often and well when they are engaged. Here are three writing techniques you can invite your students to try tomorrow that increase engagement and build writing skills.

Sketch and Label

This strategy is a great springboard to get the creative juices flowing. First, have students sketch something memorable (their room at home, visiting a relative, going to a favorite park, a family gathering). Instruct them to draw the setting (note how this portion of the activity uses reading vocabulary) in as much detail as they can. Then ask them to label the picture with words and phrases (my overstuffed bookshelf, my pet guinea pig, orange blanket, and so on). Ask them to study the picture. Then ask them to consider what story they want to write about the picture. Students can use the words and phrases to help get the writing rolling!

Pair It Up

This strategy allows students to have fun with genres. Invite pairs of students to write about the same topic, each focusing on a different genre. For example, a pair of students could be given the topic, “the Super Bowl.” Students then choose to write a short story using either nonfiction, fiction, or poetry. In the nonfiction story, they could write what might be a real story (such as a news report) about the football game. In the fiction version, they might give a football player a superpower, such as jumping over many other players. In the poem, they might select meaningful words about the competition to express ideas about the game. The students then compare how the same topic, in different genres, changes how it is written.

Start by practicing this approach with the whole class using a topic such as “my new shoes.” A shared writing lesson can demonstrate the fun this strategy provides in thinking about topics.

Convincing Trailers

Share with students that persuasive writing is all around us! You can bring in advertisements, editorials from the newspaper, or search “commercials for kids” and choose some that are appropriate for your students. As a class, discuss what the commercial writer (or advertiser or editorial writer) used to persuade the viewer. This is a perfect place to double up on your literacy and content instruction. Then have students choose an informational content book (picture or chapter book) and write a “commercial” to convince other students to read it. You might even show a few movie trailers of age-appropriate movies to demonstrate how we entice the viewer while avoiding spoilers! Don’t give away the best part!

Finding ways to make writing fun for students will engage even the most resistant writers. Giving them solid skills and strategies early on will increase their writing techniques. New approaches, engaging topics, peer support, and teacher enthusiasm and positivity about the writing process will give students the confidence needed to become proficient writers.