These lessons can be used to introduce or enhance the six traits (main idea, supporting details, organization, sentence fluency, voice, and conventions) and to help students gain confidence as writers. Presentation is particularly important when work is to be displayed.

Do not limit your students to just these particular activities. Use them as they are, or as springboards for creating activities that go with your own curriculum or class needs.

Give each student a piece of white paper and have them fold it in half by folding the short sides together. Choose one of the stems below and have them write and illustrate the first part on the left side of the paper. Use the right side for the second part of the stem.

I used to be _______, but now I'm _________.

I seem to be ______, but really I'm _________.

I'm good at _______, but I'm not so good at ________.

Another way to do this is as a poem, just put several lines together:

I used to be young, but now I am old.

I used to be thinner, but now I am not.

I used to have brown hair, but now I am blonde.

I used to be a beginning teacher, but now I am near retirement.

I used to have some energy, but now I don't.

Other stems:  

Don't  you just hate it when . . . ?

A friend is . . . .

Read If The Dinosaurs Came Back by Bernard Most. Have students draw their own dinosaur pictures  and come up with ways to use them.

If the dinosaurs came back, __________________________.

Write and illustrate cinquains. Keep the illustrations as simple as the poems by cutting out a shape which represents the subject of the poem. Copy the cinquain on a white sheet of paper. Put the shape under the paper and color it with short "paperless" crayons. Direct students to use the side of the crayon and just color over the shape until the outline is clear. Tell them not to outline the shape! The shape can be moved so it is repeated in a pleasing design, random or planned, all over the page. Students may elect to use one color or two, but too many different colors will take away from the design. Small details may be added to each shape, but too much detail detracts from the words.

 Write and illustrate sentence pyramids. This is a good exercise for adding details and expanding a thought.

I saw a clown.

I saw a funny clown.

I saw a funny clown juggling.

I saw a funny clown juggling bowling pins.

I saw a funny clown juggling bowling pins in a parade.

I saw a funny clown juggling bowling pins in a Christmas parade.

 Have students draw self-portraits as they look today, but dressed like they will dress for their chosen profession when they are adults. They can include some background that indicates their work place. Have them write about where they will go to school and what they will study to prepare themselves. This activity provides an enlightening and amusing look at your students.

Have students cut out an article of clothing such as a T-shirt or sweatshirtand decorate it. The design can be made up or taken from a favorite piece of clothing. Write a story with the article of clothing describing a day in its life.

Have students fill out a Report Card on the Teacher. If you are brave, ask them to draw a picture, but this is one activity that is just fun for students and no art is necessary. This is a very humbling experience. The students have to give you a grade in several categories and write an explanation telling why they think you deserve this grade and give an example to support their thinking.

If you are the perfect teacher, never make anyone mad, never show any sign of displeasure, you will get only glowing remarks. Congratulations! Otherwise, you will find that you need to work on some things--and many of the suggestions students make are right on target. Most students, depending on age,  will direct their remarks to your mother--just like the ones they read on their report cards: Mrs. O'Berry is a good teacher, but she needs to work on. . . .

Read When I Was Young in the Mountains by Cynthia Rylant, an exceptional model for writing memories and introducing memoir to students. Talk about how the memories from Rylant's childhood are of relatively unimportant events in her life, yet they stand out in her memory enough for her to include them in the book. Ask them to think of specific events to write and illustrate; they don't have to be major--like a trip to Disneyworld. Students may choose to use a different stem for their memory: You may want to introduce group and phase memoirs as well. If students only want to write about the spectacular, that is okay. It is their choice in the end.

When I used to live in . . . .

When we lived in. . . .

When I was in the Third Grade . . . .

When I was young in kindergarten. . . .

When I was in Mrs. _______'s room. . . .

When we went to visit. . . .

 Drawing and illustrating idioms helps young children "see" and undertand what they mean and how to use them apporpriately. Make a list of idioms and allow students to choose one to illustrate. Students will write the idiom on the paper, draw the figurative meaning and write the literal meaning underneath. Put these in a class book for students to read and think about.

  Read Goodnight, Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, an old favorite that most students are familiar with, and recreate the book for the new millennium. Have students draw a bedroom and include items found in children's rooms today: TVs, Nintendo, skate boards, posters of rock starts, etc.  I teach baseline and simple perspective with this activity. Students will choose one or two items in their illustrations to wish "goodnight." Compile the pages into a class book. With luck and careful arranging of pages, you MAY achieve the rhythm of the original book.

Read "The Toucan" by Shel Silverstein, found in Where the Sidewalk Ends. Explain and discuss the pattern in the poem. Let children make up additional lines and add them to the poem as a whole class activity, a good opportunity to model revision. Make a large copy of the poem and surround it with toucan collages: tear the bird's body, then cut the rest of the bird parts and the background. The whole thing can be cut or torn, but the torn shapes create a nice textural interest in the pictures.

 Read The Important Book by Margaret Wise Brown.The pattern is an easy one to adapt to many subjects. Let children create individual books about things that are important to them, such as family members, pets, friends; or do a cooperative learning project to correlate with a unit or theme being taught in the classroom. The example is the last page of a book about outer space.

The first line identifies the object and tells why it is important.

The next 3 lines describe the object.

The last line repeats the first line word for word except for the word But at the beginning of the sentence.

 Read When I Was Young: Memoirs of a Four-Year-Old by Jamie Lee Curtis, yes: the movie star. The illustrations in this book are great. After reading, have the children write their own memoirs (after explaining what a memoir is and how it is different from an autobiography) in an accordion book. Four pages is enough to have a title page and relate/draw 3 memories of what life was like when they were younger.

 Read Abiyoyo by Pete Seeger,  yes: the musician. Abiyoyo is adapted from a South African lullaby and folk story, and the children love it--so do I, and so will you. It is fun to read out loud. After reading the story, have the children imagine the most awful giants and illustrate them. A writing component is part of this activity.

Frame for Abiyoyo:

I am the meanest giant of all, meaner than Abiyoyo, because I ____________________ and ___________________, but the worst thing I do is __________________________.

Children need to do the writing first and illustrate what is in the last blank of the frame. Let them write the frame across the top or bottom of the illustration.

 Most teachers use Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs for their weather unit, but it is can be used for health and nutrition as well. Food falls from the sky in the little town of Chewandswallow. The forecast changes daily and people take to the streets with plates, etc. until one day. . .

Weather Unit: Writing can be in the form of a weather bulletin.

Nutrition: Create a menu for a healthy, balanced meal (breakfast, lunch, or supper). The example is not my idea of a balanced meal.

I use this activity to talk about horizon lines, simple perspective, creating shapes to fit a particular space such as a giant slice of pizza draped over the roof of a house, doughnuts looped around a chimney or in piles.

Teach metaphors by having children write and illustrate a poem comparing themselves to different items, such as a car, piece of furniture, animal, fruit, or vegetable. Metaphors connect two different ideas, persons, places, or things. They make you see things in new ways. Metaphors do not use "like" or "as;" similes do that.

Use a stem to get the poem started: (In the spring, water, classroom, etc.)

In the morning, I am a bear,

Grouchy in my cave of sheets and pillows,

Growling at the ringing of the alarm clock,

Swatting at the button to make it stop.

Read "The Tyger" by William Blake. You won't understand it, and neither will the students. This is not even important--to me anyway. The link that accompanies this activity will send you to the poem and pages of literary discussion that just to look at, not even read, will show that no one really understands it. It is basically about an imaginary conversation with a tiger. This poem has been made into a wonderful picture book, and students like the idea of being introduced to such sophisticated poetry (I tell them they probably wouldn't hear this poem until high school otherwise; they sit right up and listen.) After reading the poem and talking about what we think it means, I ask them to think of an animal they would like to have a conversation with. What would they ask the animal? What would they like to know about how it feels to be an animal? Use any questions that will help them generate information. We use picture books about animals to help with this.

After gathering information, the students turn their ideas into poems like Blake's--somewhat. Factual information may not be included; it depends on how the student frames the poem.  And specific factual information does not lend itself to poetry, so it is discouraged. Pictures are drawn of the animals to accompany the poems. We use craypas on black construction paper and cut them for mounting on white paper.

Sometimes I do this as an alphabet book using a set of ABC animal posters, so every letter is represented. Students are encouraged to use pictures as resources for drawing, like artists do, but not to copy the work. A lesson in copyright laws can be inserted in this discussion.

Read Someday by Charlotte Zolotov. After reading the book to the students, go back through the pages noting the importance of the stem word Someday and how it is depicted in many different lettering styles. Let students write and illustrate their own pages for a class book. Older students can make individual books if time allows. Model sentences like the ones used in the book: long sentences. Encourage the use of words like "and" and "but" to expand the sentences beyond simple statements like: Someday I will drive my own car. A better sentence in this case would be: Someday I will drive a Grand Cherokee loaded with all of my friends, and we will cruise the Grand Strand at Myrtle Beach. This is more specific and gives them more to work with when they draw.

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