Writing Starters for Back to School

These back to school writing interventions are designed to help you with those students that require a little prompting during writing.

This is another free resource for teachers from The Curriculum Corner.

These back to school writing interventions are designed to help you with new ideas for writing workshop.

Use these back to school writing interventions with your struggling writers.

We love when kids are given the opportunity to be real authors during writing workshop. So many children thrive when given blank books and the freedom to write as they choose.

As much as this can be a great experience for so many of our students, it can also be a challenge for others. While we have always liked to give our students some choice, there are some students who need a little bit of prompting or structure to help them get started. This collection has been created specifically for those students.

You can download this complete back to school writing interventions collection at the bottom of this post. We are providing this set as two downloads.

There is a large download that contains the resources we will describe below.

There is also a second, smaller download. This second download contains word cards for the first 100 Fry words. They are designed to match the seasonal word cards within the larger collection.

In creating this set, our goal has been to give you a selection of possibilities. Not every resource will meet the needs of every student. Our hope is that when you find a child who is struggling, you will find one or two choices that will work to help this child move forward in their writing.

We will describe the intended use for the resources below. However, we realize that you may have other ideas on how to use what we have created.

We would love for you to share any suggestions in the comments below so that you can pass your ideas on to other teachers.

Within this back to school writing interventions collection you will find:

Back to School Word Cards These cards have pictures when appropriate. You can use these to help students who get stuck when they do not know how to spell a word. As teachers we are so used to encouraging our students to do their best with spelling. I think we have all met that child that is unable to move on if they cannot spell a word. These cards are designed for that child. We are supplying a coordinating set of the first 100 Fry words that you might include with these words. This large collection might be overwhelming. Because of this, you might choose specific words that you believe a child would be interested in writing about. As a different option, you might print and place these cards in a student’s writing folder, not cut apart.
Recording Pages There are two recording pages to go with the word cards. These pages provide a simple task for students.
Sentence Starters For students who would benefit from a sentence starter, you might use these sentence strips. If needed, provide appropriate word cards to complete a sentence you give to a child. Again, be sure to limit the number of sentences provided if multiple sentences will be overwhelming for a child.
Recording Page On this page students can write the sentence they create with the sentence strips.
Writing Prompts There are five prompts provided in two different formats. One simply has lines and the other includes a spot for students to illustrate their writing.
Sentence Squares Students read the question at the top of the page and color the picture that matches their answer. They then complete the sentence at the bottom of the page.
Picture Boxes Each box contains a picture and possible words that would be used when writing about the picture. Students write a sentence about the picture using the words to help them get started.
First, Next, Last Prompts Students describe each event using three sentences to tell what happened.
Word Boxes These are simple pages for students who might not be ready to write their own sentences. Students illustrate the word, trace the word and fill in the word box. They will then unscramble the sentence at the bottom of the page. For added practice you might have students copy the sentence onto a white board.
Back to School Fun Mini Booklet Students fill in the blanks in this booklet and illustrate each sentence.