E-Tidying up! – Favorite Writing Sites 1

It’s that time of the year again that I go through my bookmarks and Diigo lists and try to choose the sites I need/love the most, so that I can use them for the upcoming school year. Most of the times though, I end up adding even more sites to the existing lists because I get easily excited and carried away when I come across sites I find interesting. I wrote a similar post on useful sites for young learners 2-3 years ago which you can find here, but the sites you can see below focus on Writing and Creative Writing.

My Top 5!

1. http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/student-interactives/: An absolute must whatever type of writing you work on! My personal favorites are the poetry and mystery cube creators!
2. http://writingprompts.tumblr.com/: Perfect for advanced-level students with lots of inspiring prompts to choose from.
3. http://www.wordtamer.co.uk/: A site which I never get tired of using when teaching story writing! Lots of different word activities to choose from and an amazing environment to experience!
4. http://www.sixwordmemoirs.com/: I’ve mainly used this site for six word poems before introducing my students to writing in 3 words
5. http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/ks2/english/writing/leaflets/play/: I’m a huge Tim Burton fan so I think it makes sense that I love this Trapped! game on leaflet writing

Creative Writing

1. http://bogglesworldesl.com/creativewriting.htm: One of my favorite sites to use for interesting/unpredictable story starters. This page also features my all-time favorite Halloween questionnaires. Great to use with students of all levels!
2. http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/story-starters/: Scholastic’s story starters generator is another favorite! Apart from giving you really creative story starters I also love the fact that you can spin each wheel separately and change parts of the prompt you end up having!
3. http://www.creativity-portal.com/prompts/365/pictures.html: A site I’ve used again and again whenever I racked my brains to find something inspiring/unusual to use for my story writing class. Make sure you also check out this awesome list of more creative writing suggestions/tools: http://www.creativity-portal.com/howto/writing/writing.prompts.html
4. 3 sites with creative writing prompts: http://creativewritingprompts.com/#: Hover your mouse over the different numbers and find inspiring ideas you can use right away!  http://busyteacher.org/creative_writing_prompts_part_one.html: Another favorite of mine! http://writeshop.com/creative-writing-prompts-teens/
5. Sites I use for inspiration: http://bigthink.com/videos/dan-ariely-on-boredom-at-home: Big Think is a great site to use for listening practice, class debates or writing projects. http://www.drawastickman.com/episode1: Not a writing site, but one which I’ve used to work on sequence of events in stories and introduce unexpected events.

Different types of Writing

1. http://www.learnalberta.ca/content/elci/index.html?launch=true: I’ve mainly used the newspaper feature and it rocks! I love how students are first introduced to the news broadcast before learning about the different parts of a newspaper and creating their own newspaper articles.
2. http://www.factmonster.com/homework/writingskills1.html: Fact Monster is more of a reference site for students providing them with help and information they need to do their homework. I like this Writing Skills page because it’s well-organized and reminds my students of the basics of essay writing whenever they want to refresh their memory!

Young Learners

1. https://gr.pinterest.com/evelynot/pre-writing-and-handwriting-ideas/: Pinterest is a treasure trove of materials and this board is no difference! There are tons of different activities, from letter sorting and phonics to basic sentence writing.
2. http://pbskids.org/arthur/games/storyscramble/scramble.html: A great game to work on order of events in a story
3. http://www.learner.org/interactives/story/setting.html: A great animation on story elements.