Writing Fast Finishers

Happy Tuesday!!! (Is it Tuesday already?!)

I'm trying to finish up my presentations for next week's I Teach K/I Teach 1st conferences and I'm working hard on empowering our primary writers at the moment.  As I was pulling out my resources for this particular presentation, I came across a stack of my writing fast finisher activities that always seem to be a hit with the primary teachers I mentor.

Let me break it down for ya.

Pick a Pocket *might* be one of my most favorite writing station fast finisher activities ever.  You can differentiate and modify as needed.  I used this in Kindergarten and 1st grade.  I didn't pull this out 'til about mid-year for my K babies and I modified the choices they could make.  I introduced this to my first graders at the beginning of the year and then slowly opened the pockets as the year progressed.  This is a great activity for reluctant writers.  Basically, the kids just pick different pictures and phrases from the pockets and write a story based on their picks!  They love it!!!

You might remember me posting about these next two activities in March of 2011!!!  Yes, 2011!!!  Crazy to think I've been blogging that long.  Anywho...I've since updated these activities and added more to them.  I've had a chance to be more intentional about them and polish them off, if you will.

I feel like I'm always talking to my kids about adding some "spice" to their writing.  Give me some detail.  DESCRIBE what you're writing about.  This activity was created to help my kids add that detail.  I've changed this activity a bit since I posted about it in 2011 and realized it works a bit better than it did at first.  Goodness...don't we feel that way about SO many of the things we do in our classroom?!  Ha!!!  Now my kids choose a sentence card with the nouns already labeled.  Then they roll a die and pick a matching number of adjective cards to describe the nouns on the card.  I love that they get to see how their writing goes from drab to FAB just by adding a few details :)  

Roll a Sentence is great for getting kids to include nouns, verbs, and adjectives in their writing.  I've since implemented this activity by having my kids focus on one part of speech at a time during whole group.  For example, when we're talking about nouns, I pull out the noun die and focus on those for a while.  We'll roll the die together and then write about the noun we land on.  Then we'll introduce the verb dice a few days later.  We'll roll that as a whole group and then include the verb in a sentence with the noun we rolled.  Then we'll move on to the adjectives and add that to our writing.  

My kids love this activity because I give them free reign to write ANY kind of sentence they want...their sentences just have to include the words they roll.  The possibilities are endless!!

Speaking of being silly, these Silly Sentence menus are my kids favorites!!!  Basically they just choose a phrase from each column of the menu and combine them to write and illustrate a silly sentence!  SO fun!!

These are great not only for fast finisher activities, but writing center activities, too!

Sometimes we make our job SO much more harder than it is, don't we?!  ANYTIME is a great time for kids to write.  It's a skill our babies need to practice as often as possible.  They need MANY writing opportunities to be able to grow and build their stamina in this area.  They need to be confident.  They need to see themselves as "authors".  Give them those opportunities to write as often as possible!!!

Another deal of the day!   You can grab these activities for $5 today and tomorrow!!