The Writing Fix

Although I've linked to this on my links page, I wanted to point out some good sources for Reading/Language Arts teachers. The Writing Fix: Home Of Interactive Writing Prompts is a website with great ideas to marry reading and writing together. There's something for every Language Arts teacher from K-12.

• The writing prompt generator is an excellent place to start. If you join their group, they will email out 6 writing prompt ideas each Sunday, giving you a week's worth of ideas. Even if you don't join, a big friendly button will generate a prompt for you to get you started.
• The six trait homepage not only expounds on the six traits (Idea Development, Organization, Voice, Word Choice, Sentence Fluency, and Conventions) and writing materials, but their printable poster make excellent eye-candy for flipcharts/Powerpoints/Presentations.
• The Poetry Prompts offers Lessons from our Piñon Poetry Festivals, 9 Lessons inspired by picture books, 4 Lessons inspired by chapter books, 9 Lessons inspired by poetry "classics", 18 Lessons inspired by song lyrics, Right-brained poetry prompts, Left-brained poetry prompts, and Celebrating the life of Bill Abrams.
• The iPod prompts have iPod-inspired writing lessons and you can even propose lessons. They even have a template.
• The Journals and Writer's notebook page has dozens of student created examples (here is one). You could drag the pictures into ActivInspire and point out what you'd like student writers to polace in their own notebooks. If your students make weak journals, this might just give them the inspiration they need.
• The revision workshop has lessons on teaching students critical thinking. It also has chart poems at the bottom of the page perfect to drag into an Inspire lesson.
• The Literature prompts are targeted at grades 5+ and the site has 14 model writing lessons to inspire you.
• The note-taking strategies could be used in any subject. Technically, there's really more information on the summarizing (not plagiarizing!) page.

Besides that page, there is also http://corbettharrison.com/ - Always Write and http://denaharrison.com/ - Write in the Middle for grades 6-8.