To get your second grade students in the spirit for the season of fall/autumn, the following writing activity and craft usually is a lot of fun and it turns out really nice too! It’s definitely a colorful fall hallway display or bulletin board activity idea.

Begin the lesson by reading the following book to the class:

It’s Fall (Celebrate the Seasons)

After reading the book, make a list of the following senses on chart paper: see, hear, smell, touch, and taste.

Have the children close their eyes and pretend they are outside on a crisp, fall day. Let them tell you things to list things that they might see, hear, smell, touch, or taste. After completing the chart as a class, give them the following writing prompt (or one like it) and have them add a couple sentences of their own at the end:

Fall is a _________season. I like to ____________ and ______________during fall. Seeing _______________makes me think of fall. I hear __________ and ____________during this time of year. My favorite part about fall is ________________.

Once they’ve written their stories, glue the handwriting paper onto the bottom of a large sheet of construction paper. Give the children real leaves and white paper to create leaf rubbings. Glue the leaf rubbing to the top of the construction paper. Then, give each child fall di-cuts (rakes, tiny leaves, pumpkins, etc…) to decorate the remaining parts of the construction paper. Laminate these once they are finished, because they end up being a fall keepsake for parents!

So many creative writing lessons can stem directly from a read-aloud.

1. Have your students become the character or another character in a story and tell a new point of view.
2. Let the children rewrite a new ending to the story that you just read.
3. Instruct the children to change the story into a play, write the play in groups, make puppets, and act out their play for the rest of the class. Visit www.janbrett.com for some great materials to use with her books!
4. Only read half of a book and let them write what they think will follow.
5. Put “Imagine if” with just about anything! (Imagine if _____happened to you, imagine if the character did something different, imagine if it took place somewhere else, etc.)

Idioms are always so much fun when looking for a creative writing journal topic for second grade. Write the idiom or common expression, have the children write it and then write what they think it means! This is always very interesting and sometimes hilarious. The following books have great idioms and expressions to use!

What Your Second Grader Needs to Know

Everyday Idioms

In a Pickle

The Scholastic Dictionary of Idioms

Even More Parts

Fun journal prompt books are ALWAYS helpful to have around. The following are few that have some really great ideas!

Writing Prompts

Writing Prompts
(This link is for the level 2 box)

Quote a Day Writing Prompts

Comic Strip Writing Prompts

Passing out photographs, magazine pictures, and so on are great ways to get children’s minds going! If they are given a picture of a setting and a picture of some characters, they can use that to create a really fun story!

The following list provides you with links to some websites who have lists of journal writing ideas! Have fun!

http://freeology.com/journal/creative.php

http://www.canteach.ca/elementary/prompts.html

http://www.teachers.net/lessons/posts/1860.html

http://web.tampabay.rr.com/memawscorne/Journal%20Writing.htm

http://www.letteroftheweek.com/primary_journal_ideas.html

If you have other teaching ideas for creative writing journals, post them in the comments below!

Writers Workshop was something new that I implemented into my classroom this past year. I was sent to a workshop myself, in order to learn how to teach it. It was an extensive training, and I still do not feel that I am doing it exactly the way it was taught, but just as with everything else I do in the classroom, I tend to do it my own way! Doing it every single day was difficult at first, as it is definitely something the children have to learn how to do themselves, so we all learned it together at the same time! I have picked up a few books and tips that are extremely helpful in putting together lots of Writer’s Workshop activities. Here’s a brief synopsis of how I did Writer’s Workshop and tips for setting it up in the classroom!

What you will need before you begin:

1. LOTS of chart tablets (you’ll use about a sheet per day) and chart markers
2. 3 folders per child (I suggest to get three sets. I used a blue set, a red set, and a green set.)
3. 3 containers for the folders or a hard 2 inch 3-ring binder per child
4. a green pen, blue pen, red pen, and pencil per child
5. Teacher conference forms; Peer Response Forms; Personal Editing Forms
6. Post-It Notes

The parts of the workshop:

1. Community time and mini-lesson (about 10 minutes or so)
2. Writing and conferencing time (about 30-40 minutes)
3. Review time (about 10 minutes or so)

Community time and mini-lesson: Usually all at the carpet, with the children focused on the chart tablet, this is when you write out your mini-lessons. These lessons begin with “rituals and routines” at the beginning of the year (when you teach the children about how to properly participate in Writer’s Workshop). After the children understand the rituals and routines, then the lessons are focuses on all the various writing skills you want them to learn!

Writing and conferencing time: The children are encouraged to go back and write using whatever skills you’ve just introduced during the mini-lesson. The writing time is focused on the “Writing Process” which includes the following steps:

• Prewriting- The children use some sort of graphic organizer to brainstorm their ideas for their story.
• Drafting- Using their ideas from their prewriting, they begin to roughly write out their story.
• Revising- They go back into their story and change things, add new things, make it more interesting, and so on.
• Editing- They go back into the story and fix grammatical and spelling errors.
• Peer Response- They let a peer writer read their story and offer ideas and suggestions.
• Teacher Conference- The teacher listens to their story and tells uses a post-it note to tell them what’s great (Celebrate!), what they are missing, and what needs to be worked on.
• Publishing- Once their story is at its “best”, the child can then publish it by rewriting it or typing it on the computer, and then drawing pictures to go along with it!
• Author’s Chair- We do author’s chair on the daily basis (the kids sign up, usually about 4 or 5 per day). The children read what they have so far, and the other children offer up positive feedback and suggestions. Also, author’s chair is used for students to share their published work!

Review Time: Bring the children back to the carpet (community). Review the lesson, let the children tell you/show you how they’ve included the new skill in their work, and have author’s chair!

The following is a great site that shows you how to put together the folders and there are some great printables to use for set up of the Writer’s Workshop and for student/teacher use!

http://teacherweb.com/sc/blythe/madden/hf5.stm

The following is a neat book to read that will really help you further with getting everything ready and with strategies/techniques for keeping it up!

Click here to find out more about Writing Like Writers

This book is easy to read and helps to inspire you to start implementing Writer’s Workshop in your classroom!

Click here to find out more about The Writing Workshop

What better way to learn about Writer’s Workshop than to listen to what other teachers have to say about it? The following is a book compiled of actual teachers’ struggles and successes with implementing it. This book has teachers from grades one through eight offering their stories of accomplishments and struggles! It’s a very unique way to learn!

Click here to find out more about Writer’s Workshop

The following book is incredibly helpful to those of us who teach the primary grades (K-2). This book really helps teachers get started, gets students inspired, and it offers specifics lessons and units of study to get one started teaching these little ones how to become better writers!

Click here to see About the Authors

This should be plenty of information to help you get your own Writer’s Workshop started in your classroom. If you have any other tips to share or Writers Workshops activities, please share them in the comment section below!