Many writers believe strongly that just like a good physical exercise regimen, writing has to be done everyday. As writing teachers, I'm sure many of us subscribe to this belief and would love nothing more than to witness our students working their writing muscles daily. This is why blogs are finding their way into many classrooms: they motivate students to keep writing.

This week I'm going to show you a few sites to get your students writing "mini-pieces." These little writing tools could be used for a variety of goals: to help with brainstorming; to create poetry; to keep a daily journal; to capture thoughts; use these sites to compliment some of the excellent mini-writing plans provided by Barry Lane; boost creativity; or just plain keep students writing with these engaging sites.

Less is More
Sometimes the hardest thing in writing is deciding what to leave out. Help your students refine their thoughts and editing skills by confining their writing to a small index card. Using the Catalog Card Generator will help students focus their thoughts and will output their writing in a variety of authentic and aged looking cards, much like those that were used in library card catalogs. Perfectly sized for Haiku, jokes, or to-do lists, your students will be motivated to see what the final product will look like. Here's an idea for this tool: have students create cards with descriptions of pretend books written about a concept being studied in the classroom.

Here's another tool to practice writing concisely: The Newspaper Clipping Generator. Students can start a news story with this tool, focusing on creating a strong headline and opening paragraphs. The generated image looks just like a real newspaper clipping, suitable for posting on a web page.

Even Less
The next site I want to share this week is from Big Huge Lab. There are plenty of things to do at this site, but I'm going to focus on only 2 tools: Motivator and Poster. Take a concept that you're studying in the classroom and let students demonstrate understanding by using either of these tools. We all see those motivational posters in offices, schools, doctor offices. Give your students the challenge of creating one on what they've learned.

Example: MITOCHONDRIA: Power Up!

Students can then add their own artwork or photos found on the web that illustrate the concept.

Using the Poster option gives students the challenge of creating a "movie" poster to explain a concept learned. I used this with 1st and 2nd graders who were creating a "Vocabulary Opera" based on a book by Kate DiCamillo. Students added their own artwork, a vocabulary word, and the meaning of the word in order to generate interest in their show by hanging the posters around the school. You can see their work here.

Just Add Words
One of my favorite sites to get students writing daily is ETTC's Instant Poetry Forms. At last count, there are over 80 different poetry forms for students to work with. With each poem choice, students are given directions, shown samples of the poetry form and provided easy "fill in the blank" boxes to finish poems that have already been started for them. In some of the boxes, students are instructed what to add (i.e., verb, noun), which will have the engaging familiarity of "Mad Libs" games. The poems can then be printed or copied into a word processing document to revise further.

Offering these short activities to your scholars should help keep their words flowing and their writing muscles in shape.

Bob Sprankle has been a multi-age teacher in Wells, ME for 10 years and has served as the school's Technology Integrator for the past two years.

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