Classroom Writing Activities

Start with a writing idea

The mind maps on this page offer several ways into classroom writing. Start with Writing Activities for an overview of possible tasks, including a book review, a personal story, describing someone and answering a letter. Choose a task that fits what you want to explore, then look for a more focused map.

For sentence building, Sentence Makers brings together ideas such as adding words, punctuation and letter sounds. It also mentions teacher-made material and participation. Use it to think about how a sentence activity could be organized.

Explore an activity step by step

Teaching Writing outlines an activity on describing people. Before writing, the teacher shows students a picture and asks them to name features of the person's physical appearance. This gives you a starting point for thinking about what students might discuss before they write.

Other maps explore using video and drama in writing activities. One connects video with listening, watching and narrative text. Another includes drama, role-play, mime and acting alongside ideas such as writing letters and making lists. Compare the maps to see the different activity ideas they bring together.

Use the maps for study

A map on remedial and enrichment activities includes ideas for helping learners with writing difficulties and building useful vocabulary. Another groups writing tasks under types such as description, narration, argument and analysis. These maps offer different starting points: one focuses on support, while the other organizes types of writing.

This page is the Classroom Writing Activities section of Teaching Writing, in Education and pedagogy (incl. teaching methods, curriculum, educational psychology). Use the maps here to explore activity ideas within that unit. There are no quizzes on this topic page, so you can return to a map and check which ideas you remember. Open a map and follow a branch that interests you.