Building Strong Writers in Middle School: Classroom-Ready Activities That Inspire Creativity and Support Core Standards

How can educators of students in grades 4-8 promote authentic language arts skills? By engaging young people in meaningful writing activities that relate to their lives. This book features twenty-four classroom-ready activities that incorporate adolescent interests into writing assignments supporting Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts. Students are empowered to write about what matters to them—their identities, their goals and dreams, their struggles, their relationships. Authors Deb and Jim Delisle prove that successful middle school language arts instruction can—and should—be fun.

Complete with step-by-step directions and student examples—and developed and tested in public and private classrooms with students of varying abilities—Building Strong Writers in Middle School can help inspire students to explore their personal thoughts and beliefs while building proficiency in core language arts concepts. With writing now being required across the curriculum, middle school language arts instruction is more important than ever.

• Writing to Get to Know Each Other: short, single-session activities designed to help students and teachers learn more about each other
• Writing to Understand Ourselves: activities for students to explore their personal beliefs and ideas
• Writing to Make a Difference: activities in which students acknowledge people who have impacted their lives and/or share their finished products with others who may be positively affected by the projects
• Writing to Make Art: activities that involve a form of literary expression (such as fiction, poetry, and song lyrics) and an element of visual art

Each activity includes three types of extensions:

• Classroom Extensions: Get greater value out of the activity by modifying or expanding it with your students
• School Extensions: Get your whole grade, team, or school involved by opening up the activity in ways that include other students and staff
• Family Extensions: Invite families to be part of the project, and learn from each other by asking them to participate in the activities

All the activities in this book are designed to encourage personal expression, to value the process over the product, to engage both the mind and the heart . . . and to be fun. Teachers of English language arts can help all students, regardless of skill level or their particular strengths, to feel truly engaged in the writing process.

The accompanying CD-ROM includes all of the handouts from the book, including many that are customisable.

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