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For some students the hardest part of starting a creative writing assignment is generating an idea to write about. Here are seven good sources of writing prompts that you can share with your students.

For some students the hardest part of starting a creative writing assignment is generating an idea to write about. Here are seven good sources of writing prompts that you can share with your students.

Another good video/animation to use at the start of a writing session - this time looking at the use of dialogue! 

Cool video/animation to help students create tension and drama in their writing! 

Some great ideas here for integrating ICT to facilitate better writing and formative assessment. Any experienced English teacher knows the drill: on the dreaded due date, students bring printed copies of their essays to class, where we collect them, take them home, jot inscrutable comments in the margins, bring them back to class, return them, and then watch students promptly toss them in the recycling bin on the way out of the room. The whole cycle borders on farce. Students pretend to spend many hours writing their papers, teachers pretend to spend many hours grading them, and we all pretend like repeating this process over and over again leads to something we in education like to call "student growth."

"Blogging in education is about quality and authentic writing in digital spaces with a global audience, while observing digital citizenship responsibilities and rights, as on documents, reflects, organizes and makes one's learning and thinking visible and searchable! "

"Literacy is changing. It really is. Even in my grade one classroom as the students begin to learn their letters and sounds, as they start to put those letters and sounds together into words, and as they take their first hesitant steps to read and write. The change in our classroom was subtle at first. When my students began writing the word we with two i's, I smiled and talked about the more traditional spelling of the word. When students came to school with a clear understanding of what it meant to get to the next level or to have several lives, I took notice of the new vocabulary they had."

This could be a great creative writing stimulus.

A collection of illustrated story starters for young children to prompt creative writing.

A GREAT resource suggested by Lauren. Her synopsis: "Little, quick science experiments (eg. baking soda and vinegar) make awesome writing prompts. Science poetry, a totally unappreciated genre!"

Some good topics here, some are more for secondary students. 

Wow what a great chrome extension. This looks like a great tool for all writers. I especially like the 'collect highlights' tool. Make sure you watch the accompanying video to see how it works.  Read&Write for Google Docs is a cool extension I found on Web App Reviews that can benefit ELLs and struggling readers. The extension provides you with a special toolbar on the top of your Google documents.

"The Google Docs collection provides a streamlined, collaborative solution to writing papers, organizing presentations and putting together spreadsheets and reports. But besides the basic features, there are lots of little tricks and hacks you can use to make your Google Docs experience even more productive. Here are 100 great tips for using the documents, presentations and spreadsheets in Google Docs."

"Whether you're the parent of a child with a reading disability or an educator that works with learning disabled students on a daily basis, you're undoubtedly always looking for new tools to help these bright young kids meet their potential and work through their disability. While there are numerous technologies out there that can help, perhaps one of the richest is the iPad, which offers dozens of applications designed to meet the needs of learning disabled kids and beginning readers alike. Here, we highlight just a few of the amazing apps out there that can help students with a reading disability improve their skills not only in reading, writing, and spelling, but also get a boost in confidence and learn to see school as a fun, engaging activity, not a struggle."

Blogging is an excellent way of motivating students to develop a lifelong love of learning. Writing is a process, and when they learn this they will be able to apply the skills to other aspects of their schooling. It also teaches children critical thinking skills which will help them as they progress through school. Along with the development of critical thinking skills, students will learn how to conduct research. This is particularly important both in school and in the workplace they will one day take part in.

"On the heels of Blogging is NOT Analog Writing in Digital Spaces, I decided to re-create the sketchnote of  There is More to Blogging with Your Students. I added Reading in Digital Spaces to the Mix."

"Finland is planning to phase out handwriting classes in favour of keyboard skills, a recognition that this generation will never write a letter, birthday card or love letter. Instead, they'll text, tap and tweet."

Kids don't hate math. Not even fractions. Ask them to divide a bag of candy among themselves and watch them tackle the problem. What they hate is repeat computation, void of context. Add a timer and they really hate it.

A fabulous collection of reading prompts and posters for the classroom.