Writing Education Resources for Elementary Students

Elementary students need a wide variety of writing-related activities. Students progress from the mechanics of forming letters and words through writing sentences, paragraphs and stories. Within each grade level, students are also at various different levels, and the elementary school teacher has to be prepared to work with students at all levels. Online resources can help with this.

Writing Education Resources: Printing Practice

Resources for both D'Nealian and Zaner-Bloser printing methods are available on several websites. FirstSchool (first-school.ws) has tracing pages for upper and lower-case letters, with arrows to show how to print the letters. These pages also include pictures to color for each letter, and are great for beginners.

Teachers and parents can make custom tracer pages at Kidzone (kidzone.ws). Simply type in the letters or words to be traced, and the site will create a tracer page in either D'Nealian or Zaner-Bloser font. These pages can also be customized with seasonal pictures.

Writing Education Resources: Writing Journals

Reading site Starfall (starfall.com) also provides free, printable journals, which include words to trace, fill-in-the blank sentences, and free writing prompts. Full color journals can be purchased here as well.

Writing Education Resources: Grammar lessons

The Scott-Foresman Company has free, printable grammar workbooks on their site (sfreading.com/resources/ghb.html) for grades one through six. These provide grammar lessons on subjects, predicates, nouns, verbs, adjectives, and more. They also includes writing assignments, such as sentences, paragraphs, stories, and essays.

Writing Education Resources: Reports

Childsoft Press (childsoftpress.com) offers a tutorial and resources for writing a book report. They include a pre-outline form, which can be printed or copied and pasted into a word processing document.

Time for Kids (from Time Magazine) has a report-writing section under Homework Helper. This includes information on how to write essays, how-to articles, news stories, biographies, book reports, and research papers, along with sample papers.

Writing Education Resources: Fiction and Poetry

Scriptito's Place (members.aol.com/vangarnews/scriptito.html) has writing tips and story starters specifically for writers aged 7-15.

Poetry for Kids at Gigglepotz(.com) includes fun poetry to read, plus instructions for how to write various kinds of poetry, such as acrostic poems, haikus, and cinquains.

Scholastic(.com) has the greatest number of resources and activities for writing. Go to the Student Activities section of the website, and then select Language Arts and Writing from the choices on the left. There are activities, games, interactive workshops, opportunities for students to post their writing, articles, and lesson plans. This could be a very exciting place for aspiring authors.

Writing Education Resources: Test Preparation

Test preparation shouldn't be the focus of curriculum, but it is helpful for all students. The Scott-Foresman grammar workbook mentioned above includes lessons and exercises intended to prepare students for tests.

Writing Education Resources: Summary

Writing is an essential part of any education. Parents and teachers can both make use of these resources to make students the best writers they can possibly be. Writing well is essential to both academic and occupational futures.