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Mother and daughter painting an environmental mural together

25 Activities for Reading and Writing Fun

Doing activities with your children allows you to promote their reading and writing skills while having fun at the same time. These activities for pre-readers, beginning readers, and older readers includes what you need and what to do for each one.

young red-headed boy outside writing in a notebook

Accessing Skills Toward Successful Writing Development

Writing is a highly complex language skill. Without skilled, systematic instruction, many students — particularly those with disabilities — may not become proficient writers. At stake is access to the general education curriculum. This brief discusses developmental stages, why writing may pose particular challenges for students with disabilities, and what areas should be the focus for remediation.

Assistive Technology for Writing

Assistive Technology for Writing

Assistive technology (AT) can help kids with different types of writing challenges. AT tools can make the physical act of writing easier, as well as help kids who have trouble with spelling and grammar, and with organizing and expressing their thoughts. This guide provides an introduction to AT writing tools and where to find them.

Assistive Technology Tools: Writing

Assistive Technology Tools: Writing

Learn about assistive technology tools — from abbreviation expanders to word-recognition software programs — that address your child’s specific writing difficulties.

Young Latina student smiling in the classroom at her desk

Children’s Writing in ESL

In teaching second language learners how to speak and read English, it is important not to neglect their writing development. Here are some strategies for teaching ESL children to become writers.
Community Stories

Community Stories

Literacy activities can take on a new meaning when students are reading and writing about their own community. Children learn the true value of print when they document the oral histories of the elders in their town.

young red-headed boy outside writing in a notebook

Computer-Assisted Instruction and Writing

This brief provides an overview of computer-assisted instruction and looks at how writing software can help students with developing ideas, organizing, outlining, brainstorming, and minimizing the physical effort spent on writing so that students can pay attention to organization and content.
Creating Holiday Learning Traditions

Creating Holiday Learning Traditions

During the holiday season, consider adding some new traditions for your family that will make meaningful memories and strengthen foundations for reading and learning success.

Daybooks: A Book for Your Mind

Daybooks: A Book for Your Mind

This article explains how to create and use a daybook in the literacy classroom. Readers learn what a daybook is, how the daybook in one fourth and fifth grade classroom is structured, and how students in this classroom use that daybook during reading instruction to engage, record important information, and discuss a text.

Developing Writing and Spelling at Home

Developing Writing and Spelling at Home

Writing is a terrific way for children to express their thoughts, creativity, and uniqueness. It is also a fundamental way in which children learn to organize ideas and helps them to be better readers.

Dictation (Speech-to-Text) Technology: What It Is and How It Works

Dictation (Speech-to-Text) Technology: What It Is and How It Works

Dictation is an assistive technology (AT) tool that can help kids who struggle with writing. Kids can use dictation to write with their voices, instead of writing by hand or with a keyboard — helpful for kids with dysgraphia, dyslexia and other learning and attention issues that impact writing. 

young red-headed boy outside writing in a notebook

Differentiated Instruction for Writing

Differentiated instruction, also called differentiation, is a process through which teachers enhance learning by matching student characteristics to instruction and assessment. Writing instruction can be differentiated to allow students varying amounts of time to complete assignments, to give students different writing product options, and to teach skills related to the writing process.

Digital Storytelling: Extending the Potential for Struggling Writers

Digital Storytelling: Extending the Potential for Struggling Writers

While some young writers may struggle with traditional literacy, tapping into new literacies like digital storytelling may boost motivation and scaffold understanding of traditional literacies. Three types of struggling writers are introduced followed by descriptions of ways digital storytelling can support their development.

young red-headed boy outside writing in a notebook

Drafting

Find out how to help your students improve their writing through activities and tools that support the drafting stage. Show your students how to use technology tools to create, revise, and store their drafts in a digital writing portfolio.
Young boy looking at camera with his chalk drawing in the background

Dysgraphia Accommodations and Modifications

Signs and symptoms of dysgraphia are described. You’ll also learn about effective accommodations and modifications such as allowing more time, simplifying the task, and allowing assistance for part of the task. The last section of the article has remediation recommendations to help the student improve their writing and overcome their dysgraphia.

Young boy looking at camera with his chalk drawing in the background

Dysgraphia: More Than Just Bad Handwriting

Teachers and parents should suspect dysgraphia if a child’s handwriting is unusually difficult to read. Find out more about this neurological problem that can cause physical pain as some children struggle to write.

young red-headed boy outside writing in a notebook

Dysgraphia: A Student’s Perspective on Writing

Eli, a young boy, tells us what it is like to have dysgraphia. Regina Richards, a well-known expert on dysgraphia (and Eli’s mom), explains how to help children who struggle with the challenges Eli describes. Practical techniques discussed include POWER: Prepare, Organize, Write, Edit, Revise.

Extending Interactive Writing Into Grades 2–5

Extending Interactive Writing Into Grades 2–5

Interactive writing is a dynamic instructional method where teacher and students work together to construct a meaningful text while discussing the details of the writing process. The writing demands of the Common Core standards require explicit and efficient teaching guidance, which is at the heart of interactive writing. Learn four specific ways teachers can adapt this practice when working with children in grades 2-5 who are more developed writers.

Family Stories

Family Stories

Children can learn about family heritage at the same time they are improving their literacy skills. Using family-based writing projects, you can build a connection with parents, and help children see the value in their own heritage and in the diversity around them.

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