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The Write-n-ator highlights words and vocabulary through fun videos and writing challenges starring the PBS character Word Girl.  Offer these challenges to your students as a class using a projector or interactive whiteboard.  Watch the video clip and create a class response to add to the challenge.  Alternately, each student can take the challenge in a writing journal.  These videos and challenges make for a fun introductory activity to use as a writing warm up.  They have the added benefit of introducing new words and vocabulary.

Comic Creator in the classroom: The Boy's Life Comic Creator is a great little tool to help your boys connect with writing and story telling in a way that they enjoy and understand. The tool is simple enough to use as a writing station/center on classroom computers. The comic does need to be created in one sitting, there is no way to save and come back to a comic later. Completed comics can be printed off and shared. The Comic Creator is a great entry point into writing but could also be useful in math for creating and solving story problems. Students can create a short math comic strip that can be traded with other students to solve. Students taking a foreign language class could practice new words by creating a comic strip story in Comic Creator. Use Comic Creator the first week of school as a way for boys to tell all about themselves. Each student can create a comic strip that stars them as the main character. Invite other students to try to match the comic strip with the student as a fun interactive bulletin board activity (Think comics on one side, student pictures on the other and string to draw the "line" between matches).

A plethora of writing prompts.

1) How does using the confined space of Twitter help your writing?2) What kinds of things do you think about when you use Twitter?3) Are there any other things that you would like to use Twitter for?4) Has using Twitter made you a better writer in other areas when using a pencil and paper? Computer?

Comic Master could be a good tool for getting reluctant writers writing. The organization that sponsors Comic Master offers teachers a set of lesson plans built upon the use of Comic Master in the classroom. The lesson plans are designed for students between eleven and fourteen years of age.