The Writing Wall

10

TEACHING WRITING ACTIVITIES

The Writing Wall Because

writing does

boring

and

not

have

repetitive

to

be

The Writing Wall

Reacting to a Quote Hunt for QR Codes Pen Pals Comics Do you know the paragraph?

Punctuation Synonym Bingo Type of sentences Adjective Filler Biography

Table of contents

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Page 02

Reacting to a Quote Procedure

Objective: To build of the students’ natural way of sharing their opinions on topics through writing.

Stage: Free Writing Materials: -Quote

In this activity, the teacher will display a quote of any kind. It is completely up to the teacher whether the quote is sad, happy, meaningful, short, long, or anything. The teacher will read the quote to the students and then they will all take five to ten minutes to write down what they think about the quote.

They may write about anything they want. Did they agree with the quote?

Did they disagree? Did the quote remind them of something else? Were they confused? Even if they don’t understand the quote, they can still write about why they don’t understand it. Through this activity, the students are prompted to write, but they aren’t limited or pressured to write anything other than their thoughts and opinions.

Page 03

Objective: To measure student achievement and skill acquisition at the end of the instructional period.

Stage: controlled and guided Materials: -QR codes

Procedure:

Hunt for QR Codes

In this summative assessment students have to go around the school looking for QR codes that contain writing tasks or clues to the game. Questions can range from filling in the blanks to writing paragraphs. We can get better results if we use themes like pokemon go, Harry Potter, anime, bands, among others.

Page 04

Pen Pals

Objective: To teach the students to write letters as well as having them practice their writing skills in a way that doesn’t feel like they’re working.

Stage: Free writing Materials: - Necessities for mailing letters.

Procedure: It is common knowledge that students feel more comfortable talking with kids their age than with adults or people that are in a position of authority. In this writing activity the students could be writing to another class that you teach, or even students from another school. The students will send each other letters where they can discuss whatever they want. This will prompt a more enthusiastic response from your students to write, as well as ensure that they are practicing their writing skills without knowing it.

Page 05

Comics

Objective: To use comics as an instructional tool to exemplify the usage of interjections.

Stage: Guided practice Materials: List of interjections Comic or manga templates

Marvel Comics, DC Comics, and Japanese manga are very popular among teenagers and can be used as a tool to have them writing without complaining about it.

Give students a list of interjections and an empty comic or manga template and ask them to create a story as they like. The only requirement is that they have to use different interjections in each dialogue. When they are done, ask them to share their stories with their classmates.

Page 06

Objective: For the students to be able to discriminate between the different types of paragraph structures.

Stage: Analysis discrimination

Do You Know The Paragraph?

The teacher will give the students several pieces of paper, each one with the name of a type of paragraph. The teacher will then display a paragraph on the board. The students must read the paragraph and analyze it to find out what type of paragraph it is. Once the students know what type of paragraph is being displayed, they must hold up the piece of paper that has that type of paragraph written on it.

Page 07

Punctuation Objective: To identify and apply the different punctuation marks correctly.

Stage: Controlled Materials: markers

In this activity the class will be divided into two teams.

The teacher will project different sentences on the board, and one representative of each team must read it carefully and identify if there is a punctuation mark missing and, if so, place it correctly.

The first representative to correct the sentence gets one point for the entire team.

Page 08

Synonym Bingo Each student will receive a unique bingo card that will contain a variety of words. The teacher will say a list of words and if the student has a synonym of the given word on their bingo card, then they will mark it. The first student who gets 4 marks in one row wins.

Objective: To broaden the vocabulary of the students so that their writing is more diverse.

Stage: Controlled

Page 09

Type of Sentences

Objective: To recognize and apply the different sentence structures.

Stage: guided practice Materials: -Online wheel Markers

In this collaborative writing activity students have to work together to create a story using the different sentence structures (simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex).

Each student has to spin a wheel that will determine what type of sentence they have to use, and then write it in the whiteboard.

Page 10

Adjective Filler

Objective: To help the students be able describe things in different ways.

Stage: Guided practice Materials:

-books

The teacher will have the students in pairs. Each pair will get a short book or a short story according to their age and level. The students will then pick two pages from the book or story and change all of the adjectives in those pages to another one. It can be a similar adjective or one that is completely different as long as it still makes sense with the rest of the story. This will help keep the students from using the same adjectives they always use so that the descriptions in their writing will be more rich.

Page 11

Biography

Objective: To practice the usage of the different pronouns (personal, demonstrative, possessive and so on)

Sassy

Teen Magazine

Stage: Free Writing Materials: Facebook/Instagram/Twit ter templates

Procedure

Give students Facebook, Instagram, or twitter templates and encourage them to write their autobiography or the biography of a celebrity or fictional character. They can also use pictures or drawings to make posts.

Using the concept of social networks is an effective technique to engage learners in the lesson