Must Have Resources to Target Writing Skills
Think of a skill that you learned back in elementary school, middle school, high school, and continue to use everyday as an adult. Hopefully we have become mind readers and you are thinking…WRITING! Writing is probably the most important life skill and the one that our students struggle with the most. As speech and language providers working with older students, writing is also a skill that our students need in order to pass their classes. As a result, a majority of our expressive language goals target writing.
As SLP’s with caseloads of students with writing goals, we are always thinking about the following questions:
“How can I make writing fun for my high schoolers?”
“How can I help my high school students write?”
“How do I engage students in writing activities?”
Let’s dive in and try and answer some of those questions that you are probably thinking as well!
How can I make writing fun for my high schoolers?
Break it up! Do not make them just sit down and write an essay. Break down the process into smaller and more manageable tasks so they are not burnt out and so they feel successful. Sometimes we even allow students to work together on writing tasks – everyone loves group work! 
How can I help my high school students write?
Using strategies that are clear and easy to remember is key! We try to keep it simple so that our students are more likely to generalize the new strategies when they are in the classroom setting. Some of the strategies that we use are R.A.C.E., ARMS/CUPS, etc. We are constantly thinking what will be the best for the older students and have developed resources that help the tactile and visual learner (i.e. Put a Ring On It and Cube It!). Both groups of resources really help to target carryover for the students so they can generalize the newly learned skills into the classroom setting.
How do I engage students in writing activities?
Make the topic relatable! We are constantly searching for and using relatable topics in our materials. Our students are more engaged and more willing to participate when they are writing about a topic that they find interesting. Ask your students what their interests are and find a topic that they can relate to.
What are our favorite writing activities for high school students?
The following writing exercises are designed to make it easier to engage your students in writing tasks while providing fun topics that keep them motivated.
The following ‘Must Have’ resources are great when targeting writing goals with your students. The older students are expected to write different types of essays for different purposes and subjects. These resources can be seen as ‘units’ and will last you weeks and some even months.
This resource helps your students improve their reading, writing, and inferential thinking skills using the easy to remember acronym, R.A.C.E. This strategy is a well-researched writing strategy which stands for:
- Restate the question
- Answer the question
- Cite the evidence
- Explain the evidence
This strategy helps students learn how to write a constructed response using evidence from the text. This resource breaks down the acronym and gives students the opportunity to practice. We have included a lesson plan, plenty of practice, rubrics, and so much more!
Argumentative Digital Notebook
This is your go-to resource when teaching your students argumentative writing. We break down every aspect of the process. The best part is you can re-use it with different topics since it is customizable for your choice of topic. This resource includes:
- Developing your claim and counterclaim
- Annotating the texts
- Identifying and Analyzing your Evidence
- Organizing your Essay
- Writing your essay
- Reviewing and Editing your Essay
- Peer Reviewing with Rubrics
Argumentative writing is such an essential skill that your students will need to master in high school and even after high school. This resource makes it easy to support these skills!
This is your go-to resource to teach your students how to analyze and extract information from fictional texts. This resource is a complete unit and will give you weeks of lessons. This resource includes:
- Analysis of a task
- Review of literary devices
- Literary Device Matching Activity and Practice Questions
- Mini-Lesson on Annotating
- Graphic Organizers
- Sentence Frames
- Outlines
We have included a lesson plan in this resource to save you time during your prep periods!
Our resources are low-prep/no-prep, printable, and digital! Make sure to take a peek at our writing section in our TpT store and look at the previews to get a better sense of what is in each resource. Most of these resources mentioned above will take more than one session to complete – you will even be able to use one resource for a few weeks (sometimes months!). Having these resources saves you planning and prep time so you can focus on other things. What is your favorite writing strategy or activity? Leave a comment below!
