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"30 Ideas for Teaching Writing The National Writing Project's 30 Ideas for Teaching Writing offers successful strategies contributed by experienced writing project teachers. Since NWP does not promote a single approach to teaching writing, readers will benefit from a variety of eclectic, classroom-tested techniques."

"Where Do You Get Your Ideas?: Favorite Authors Reveal Their Writing Secrets"

Writing benchmark 1.2: Developing Ideas

Ideas for Writing You've probably heard the saying "write what you know" but writing is also a great way to learn about something new. Here's some suggestions for exploring writing ideas and a list of topics that you might not have thought about before.

"Teacher Ideas This page features all the lesson plans and classroom ideas I've collected. They're organized by topic, with general education and Dahl resources first, books next, and shortstories last"

Short Story unit

"Poetry Idea Engine Get your poetry juices flowing with the Poetry Idea Engine. Created with GoCyberCamp, this activity will allow you to write haikus, free verse, limericks, and more!"

Summarizing can be highly effective for helping students identify main ideas, generalize, remove redundancy, integrate ideas, and improve memory for what is read. It is especially worthwhile when used with other strategies such as generating questions and answering questions (NRP, 2000). Although sometimes considered similar to synthesizing, it is important to note that summarizing is more of a part of synthesizing. While creating a synthesis lends itself toward the achievement of creating a new perspective or thought out of what one is reading, summarizing provides more of an opportunity to understand and restate the text (Harvey & Goudvis, 2000).

"What Should I Write About?" Ralph Fletcher's blog about how to generate ideas in writing.

Writing benchmark 1.3: Generating Ideas

Writing Benchmark 1.2 Developing Ideas

This is a collection of reviews of great books for kids, ideas of ways to use them in the classroom and collections of books and activities about particular subjects, curriculum areas, themes and professional topics.

"Inference: Reading Ideas as Well as Words Ideally, speakers mean what they say and say what they mean. Spoken communication is not that simple. Much of what we understand-whether when listening or reading-we understand indirectly, by inference. Listening involves a complex combination of hearing words, analyzing sentence structure, and attempting to find meaning within the context of the given situation."

Generating ideas for writing

Great ideas for mentor text lessons focusing on the six traits of writing, using picture books at grade levels 3-12

Poetry Unit: cool unit with a lot of great ideas for performance assessments and learning activities

As teachers we need to adopt a very sensitive approach to the teaching of poetry, one that combines discussion and writing, one that examines ideas and feelings, one that encourages appreciation of the poetry of others while also giving room for our students to write freely when creating poetry. In this document I have tried to offer approaches to the teaching of writing poetry that can be used by all classroom teachers. Download a Word copy of this document here. These approaches encourage children to play around with words, to experiment with their sounds, their rhythm. They also allow the teacher to introduce new terminology in a fun way.

How can you help students find meaning in informational texts and become independent strategic readers and thinkers? Nonfiction Reading Power gives teachers a wealth of effective strategies for helping students think while they read material in all subject areas. Using the best children's books to motivate students, Adrienne Gear shows teachers how help students zoom-in, question and infer; find the main idea, make connections, and transform what's on the printed page. Key introductory concept lessons for each of the five reading powers provide valuable insight into the purpose of each strategy. The book also explores the particular features of nonfiction and offers lists of key books organized around strategies and subject areas.

These tools should be used to help students engage in rigorous thinking, organize complex ideas, and scaffold their interactions with texts.

Great resources for reading/writing organization

Bring poetry to life in your school! These pages are specially designed to help you and your students to get the most out of the Poetry Archive. There are lesson plans and activities for all key stages and for the inclusive classroom. Poetry can enrich other areas of the curriculum too; there are ideas here for History teachers, and we will be adding material for other subject areas in the coming months. This is a growing, developing resource, so come back and visit regularly to see what's new. Our plans include a forum for teachers to discuss their experiences, as well as a space where you will be able to create your own teaching materials and share them with colleagues.

"These strategies are designed to help students and teachers engage in dialogue concerning pieces of literature. They are not designed as assessment devices, nor as products to turn in for a grade. They are designed to be done by students and then used to reflect on the reading experience and share ideas within a community of readers. It's not necessarily the activity itself, it's how it is carried out and used to promote invested discussions."

Barry Lane revision handout: full of great ideas

These sites explain how to write memoirs and include ideas for getting started. There are also some writing examples and lists of recommended children's books that use this form of writing. There is a link to eThemes Resource on Personal Narrative Writing.