Pre-Writing Activities
The following are activities that will help students learn and perfect the writing process.
They are cross curricular games and activities that can be used as stand alones, part of another lesson, as Step Up to Writing games/activities or at home by parents to help students become familiar with the structure and grammar of writing essays.
Coordinating Conjunctions -- Instructions
Essay Organization -- This activity helps students with formal and informal essay outlines. It is aligned with the California State Standards in English Language Arts and crosses over to social studies. It incorporates the Harcourt Brace Reflections Social Studies Series vocabulary, but it can be used in any writing forum.
Sentence Sorting -- Again, this activity is aligned with the California State Social Studies standards, but it can be used for any writing activity. Sentence Sorting helps students with the logical organization of paragraph writing and is a great first step to writing an essay.
Topic
Sentences Using Occasion/Position Statement Activity -
One way to begin a paragraph, essay, report or other type of expository writing
is to use an Occasion/Position Statement.
An Occasion/Position Statement is a complex (two-part) sentence that
begins with one of the words or phrases that are listed on the included
templates.