Creating meaningful writing experiences is often a challenge for educators. You want your writing lessons to be rigorous and relevant to what they are learning. When students realize their is a bigger audience available to them, you will motivate your students. I have used blogging and individual students websites in my classroom for many years. I remember my first year of blogging with my students. We were so excited when we received comments. We were even more excited when we read a comment post from someone from Australia! I saw an improvement in my students’ writing skills. They wanted others, around the world, to learn from our class.
With Big Universe, you can create books for either your classroom or for other users to read. This is a great way to increase their writing skills and provide authentic writing expereinces. These writing prompts are linked common core skills and a time savers! You can use them to create books or just as a writing experience.
![Screen shot 2014-09-28 at 7.51.34 AM]()
You could also try these resources with your students:
![Screen shot 2014-09-28 at 8.10.45 AM]()
Beginning Writing 1 & 2
by Joanne Suter (author) © 2008
ISBN: 9781602914902
“There is no such thing as too much writing practice. This two-part program builds skills incrementally from bright idea to polished final product. These stimulating lessons will enable students to actually enjoy the writing process. Includes Traits of Writing correlation. The Enhanced eBook edition available gives you the freedom to cut and paste any portion of the text into your own document; to project the eBook contents on a whiteboard; and more! Topics Include: Pre-writing, Brainstorming, Grammar Basics, Rewriting Fragments and Run-Ons, Choosing Precise Adjectives and Adverbs, Linking Relating Thoughts, and more…”
![Screen shot 2014-09-28 at 7.50.15 AM]()
From Tablets to Texting
by L. Rigdon (author), Nicholas Jackson (illustrator) © 2012 ISBN: 9781620461822
“This book begins with informational text about cuneiform and hieroglyphics and ends with an alternative perspective: a girl writing in her diary about the connections between ancient and modern communication. The clever story engages readers and introduces history content.”
