Do you have your students write in a personal journal? It’s one of those simple writing exercises that can have such a huge payoff. In 3rd grade we start journal writing in the first weeks of school… but it’s never too late to start. You can grab journals and start them today! It’s such a great way to reflect on your week and have a week-to-week record of your year.

We pull out our journals each and every Friday and use them to reflect on our week. I’ve always just called them ‘Friday Journals’ (it’s not creative… I know). 

Why use journals in 3rd grade?

There are a few reasons I LOVE having a weekly reflective journal in third grade…

1. Over the course of a year, it’s a GREAT record of how much growth students have shown in their writing. You won’t believe the difference between the first and last entries. 

2. It’s an awesome way to reflect on the things you do in class each week. I send the journals home every 6-8 weeks so parents and caregivers can read about what we’re doing in class. They’ll have a bunch of entries, written by their own kids, that tell them what’s going on in class. 

3. They’re amazing relationship builders. I make a point to read each journal before the end of the day on Friday and write a single sentence back. Usually it’s just a follow up question or a statement. I’ve gotten to the point where I can read and write back to 25-30 journals in less than 30 minutes. And students LOVE getting a note back. 

4. They’re GREAT for formative assessment. It’s a good way to assess what you need to cover. While personal journals don’t get a ‘mark’ from me, I quickly read them each week

Do you assess these journals?

As I said briefly above… no, I don’t. There isn’t a ‘score’ or a ‘grade’ for these weekly entries. We have a goal to reflect on our week and build writing stamina. However I do use them as formative assessments as I craft the rest of our writing lessons. 

I find that when I take the pressure off (by not assigning a formal grade) these journals become a GREAT place to build stamina and create genuine weekly reflection. Students get less bogged-down on trying to create perfect pieces of writing.

Which journals do you use?

Almost any notebook will work. However, I LOVE these Hilroy notebooks. I’ve flip-flopped between these three. At times, I’ve even differentiated my choice for the different kiddos in my class. (Some like to add a picture, so they get the notebook that’s half lined and also has space for a picture. Other’s don’t love drawing, so they get the one that’s all lines. Some need help with their printing so they get interlined, etc.)

If I need a ‘one size fits all’ journal, I’ll choose the interlined journal that doesn’t have space for a picture. Even in third grade we continue to work on our penmanship, and this journal is great for that.

the journal writing process in 3rd grade

Before sitting down to begin journal writing time, we gather on the carpet to debrief our week. If we skip this step, I can almost guarantee that half of the class will tell me that we “did nothing” all week so they have nothing to write about. 

On a large piece of anchor chart paper I will write ‘Our Week’. Then I ask the class to brainstorm ideas of things that happened during the week. (Fire drills, new math concepts learned, the water leak in the classroom sink, school assemblies, etc.) After this, students head to their desks to write about ONE thing from the week. They can choose an item from our brainstorming session OR pick something else from the week that they want to write about. 

Finding journal writing ideas

But what do you do if students are still stuck and can’t find an idea?

Even after our group brainstorming session, there are always a handful of students who just can’t seem to find an idea for their journals. Although this usually passes as the year goes on, I always try to have some journal topic strips ready to go. These are great for getting students going who just can’t seem to find an idea. 

You can grab my favorite open-ended journal ideas for FREE right here.

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I love teaching third grade writing lessons. There is something so special about watching the light turn on for young writers. To be sure, kids can be good writers before third grade, but grade 3 is such a great time to hone in on specific writing skills. Take a look at some of my favorite lessons and activities that help to build foundational writing skills in third grade.

Text: The Best Writing Lessons for Third Grade
Image: School supplies are displayed on a blank white surface.

Writing With Transition Words

Teaching students how to use transition words in their writing is a great way to preserve your sanity! An essay or paragraph that has transition words, makes it much more smooth to read. I like to teach transition words near the beginning of the year so students can use them in all their writing assignments. There are several different ways to teach transition words in an interactive way. Check out this blog post to find five ideas on how to teach transition words.

teaching students to write creative stories

Stories are such a fun thing for students to write and also a fun thing for teachers to read! During my story writing lessons, students learn about character, setting, problems and solutions. They plan and build their own stories with a beginning, middle, and an end.

Like almost every lesson in my classroom, I use mentor texts while teaching about stories. What better way to learn how to write a story? Read a story! In this narrative writing blog post you’ll read about how I teach story writing in third grade.

finding ideas for narrative writing

How often have we all heard the sentence, “I don’t know what to write about?” I’m not the biggest fan of prewritten writing prompts, but I also don’t love to leave my students completely without any ideas at all.

This is one of my favorite lessons to help students learn to find their own writing ideas. While teaching about narrative writing, I have students pick a favorite story and then write a creative story based on that book. Narrative writing can take many forms, but students love to put a fun twist on stories they already know.

informative writing with a twist

Informative writing is vastly different from story or narrative writing. In story and narrative writings, students can take creative license to make up information or details. In informative writing, students have to learn how to gather information and then write it in a way that makes sense.

When I teach informative writing, I like to have students interview their peers to gather information. This also gives them practice with asking questions. After gathering the information, they write it into a report or a news broadcast. Check out this post for more specifics on teaching informative writing.

purposeful persuasive writing

And last, but not least, I like to teach persuasive writing in third grade. Kids are already quite good at giving persuasive arguments to their parents or other authority figures. What kid hasn’t tried to negotiate extra dessert, a playdate with a friend or staying up late on a school night? What kids need to learn is how to turn those arguments into great pieces of writing.

In this lesson, students learn how to identify their audience, identify convincing arguments/non-convincing arguments, and write a persuasive essay. And, as you’ve probably guessed, I like to use mentor texts to help my students as they generate ideas for their writing.

The growth that students show during their time in 3rd grade is so immense, and these lessons are some of my tried-and-true favorites for this age.

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“Extra! Extra! Read all about it!” The ever-popular phrase that paperboys used to yell while selling newspapers on the street. Newspapers are such great examples of informative writing. Nowadays, I don’t really read the newspaper...ever...but I do like to watch interviews online. I love seeing who or what I can learn more about. And, like many teachers, this gave me some inspiration for a writing lesson. Interviews got my thinking about authentic ways for my students to do informative writing. So, without further adieu, here is what I came up with for teaching informative writing in third grade.

Text: Teaching Informative Writing: A creative lesson for third grade that makes students junior reporters!
Image: A camera is displayed on a filmmaking set.

Setting the Scene

This lesson is a fun twist of informative writing as the students are the ones gathering the information firsthand. 

First, we have to introduce our writing lesson in a creative way. Make it exciting! Set the stage, by having students imagine themselves as TV interview hosts. Show YouTube clips of reporters on the scene interviewing, or news anchors giving an interview. I like to find local human-interest pieces that the students can relate to. Or show them some celebrity interview for a movie they have all seen or heard of. It’s your job as the teacher to really “sell” this part.

During this step, it’s also important to define the term “informative writing”.

Informative writing teaches a reader new and true information. 

Then look for examples of that in the interviews you watch. Make an anchor chart to track how the reporter sounds, who they are interviewing, and what information the audience learned through the interview. Track any else you want your students to be focusing on as well.

Brainstorm Interview Candidates

After watching some sample interviews and discussing them, it’s time to brainstorm. Come up with a list of people that the students can interview. There really isn’t a wrong answer, but here are some ideas to get you started:

• A family member (mom, dad, sibling, grandparent, uncle, etc)

• Someone who works at the school (principal, librarian, custodian, teacher, etc)

• A friend 

• A community worker (librarian, coach, police officer, nurse, etc)

Make sure there’s an alternative for students who might not have someone. For instance, if students are interviewing grandparents...well...not all kids have grandparents who are alive. Or, here’s another thought. Instead of doing the interviews outside of class time, you could partner students with their classmates so everything gets completed during classroom time.

Work on Interview Questions

Before students get to the interviews, it’s important to do a lesson about what makes a good question. A good question should require more than a one or two word answer. Thus, any question that can be answered with a “yes” or a “no” is NOT a good question. Make an anchor chart of good questions and bad questions. Some bad questions might include, “Do you like chocolate?” or “Do you have a brother?”. Some good questions might include “What are your plans for winter break?” or “What do you like to do when you go home from school?”

Have students write out their questions before conducting their interviews. Then teach students how to take note of their partner’s responses to the questions.

Write the Report

After conducting the interviews, it’s time for students to write their reports. Do a guided writing lesson to teach students how to turn their interview notes into a script. They will have to turn it into a third person script that could be read on the news. If you feel up to it, it’s also fun to teach them some of the news lingo like “In breaking news” or “Thank you for joining up this evening.”

Share Your Findings

There are fun ways for students to share their reports. They could write a newspaper article. They could write an informative essay. My favorite way for students to share their final essays is in an “Evening News Broadcast” style where they sit at a desk and share what they’ve learned about the subject. If you have access to a camera, it’s fun to film these so students can watch themselves later. You could even upload these onto your student’s online portfolios so parents can watch them as well. This helps to integrate media or technology into the project! 

Grab the whole Junior Reporters Unit!

This is such a fun project to do with students and if this sounds like something that’s up your alley, let me help you with some of the prep. I’ve created a Junior Reporters: Informative Writing in Third Grade” unit which contains lesson plans, planning pages for interview pages, final report templates (for either news anchor scripts and newspaper articles), and assessment checklists, interview script pages, good copy newspaper. Let me help you with the planning so you can spend more time with your students.

Spend Less Time Planning!

Looking for a FAST way to plan this informative writing lesson? In just a few clicks you can grab all of the pieces you need. Just print… that’s it.

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Informative writing lessons don’t have to be boring. They can come to life by adding some authentic flavor, such as news clips or interview clips. If you try this in your classroom, let me know how it goes! 

The art of persuasion. It seems that many kids do their very best to persuade their parents, friends and, yes, even teachers to see their point of view. Kids are excellent at trying to persuade others to do their bidding. Even my toddler seems to be honing her skills, always trying to find ways to convince me to leave Paw Patrol on for “just one more episode.” But learning the art of persuasive writing can be tricky. So here are some tips that I’ve learned for teaching persuasive writing in Third Grade. 

Text: Teaching persuasive writing in third grade.
Image: School supplies are displayed on a table.

How Do You Teach Persuasive Writing to Third Graders?

You might be asking yourself: How exactly should I be teaching persuasive writing to Third Graders? Well, over my years of teaching, I’ve found that keeping it as relevant as possible is key. Don’t force kids to create persuasive writing about things they aren’t actually passionate about. Very few kids want to do a persuasive writing piece on if dates or prunes are better for you…..OK, OK….. I hope that no teacher would ever make their students write about that topic, but the point still stands. Give them topics they can get passionate about.

There are so many topics that students could write persuasive arguments about. Here are some ideas:

• Which makes a better pet: 

  • Dogs vs. Cats

  • Snakes vs. Hamsters

  • Sharks vs. Alligators

• Should kids be allowed to: 

  • Be principal for the day

  • Own a cell phone, tablet, laptop...really, any type of technology

  • Bring a cell phone to school

  • Bring a pet to school

  • Drive at a younger age

  • Play video games all day

• Which is Better:

  • Soccer or Baseball

  • Bowling or Mini Golf

  • iPhones or Androids

  • Summer or Winter

  • Winter break or Summer break

  • Chapter Books or Picture books

• Reasons for:

  • Longer recess

  • No homework on the weekends

  • No homework ever

  • More snack options in the cafeteria

  • Getting a new pet

  • Going to Disneyland on a vacation

  • Going to Hawaii on a vacation

  • Going to Mexico on a vacation (can you tell that I really want to go on vacation?)

Use a Mentor Text to Teach Persuasive Writing

So, now that you have some ideas, it’s time to teach your students what the word “persuade” means. I like to write this word on an anchor chart and then read a mentor text that is a piece of persuasive writing. I’m a big fan of using mentor texts during writing lessons.

When teaching persuasive writing, I love the story “I Wanna Iguana” by Karen Kaufman Orloff and David Catrow. This story is a series of letters between a mother and son. In his letters, the son is trying to convince his mom to let him get a pet iguana. In her letters, she is making counter arguments against his reasons for getting an iguana. Some arguments are good and some aren’t as good. In the end, Alex’s reasons prevail and he gets his iguana. While this is my favorite mentor text to use when teaching persuasive writing, there are plenty of other great mentor texts out there.

Here are a few great mentor texts for persuasive writing:

• Can I Be Your Dog? By Troy Cummings 

• Rufus Goes to School by Kim Griswell

• The Big Bed by Bunmi Laditan

• Escargot by Dashka Slater

• Purple, Green and Yellow by Robert Munsch 

Discuss Ways to Persuade an Audience

Persuasive Writing: A type of writing that tires to convince a reader to agree with you.
How can we persuade readers? What do we want?

After reading the story of your choice, talk about the techniques that the authors use to persuade an audience. Make sure to pull out specific examples of the language used in the story so students can replicate the language in their own writing. Then have students brainstorm other ways to persuade a person or audience. They might come up with ideas like offering a gift or incentive, using humor, appealing to a person’s emotions, scaring the audience into doing something, or using logic.

Show Examples and Non-Examples of Persuasive Writing

Next, we need to show examples and non-examples of persuasive writing. An argument isn’t always a good argument (as seen in the book I Wanna Iguana). Students need to see that some techniques to persuade aren’t effective.

We should also talk with students about when they might have seen examples of good persuasion and poor persuasion in their lives. Social media, magazine ads, billboards, radio ads, and commercials all use the art of persuasion. Drawing students’ attention to this will be helpful when they try to write their own persuasive essay.

Reread your mentor text and pause after each argument made in the story. Ask students if they think the argument was a convincing argument or not. Record the convincing and unconvincing arguments on an anchor chart so students can visually see all the arguments. This will help students more easily determine the difference between good and bad arguments.

Write our Own Persuasive Essays

As you can see, there are a lot of steps before students actually start writing. In order to set students up for success in creating their own persuasive essay, they need to understand what makes a good argument. Before they start writing, they need to do some planning. And before the students can do the planning, you need to model what this would look like. 

Students begin planning their persuasive essays. In this example a student is planning to persuade their guardian to buy them a cellphone.

Draw up a sample planning page on the whiteboard or on an anchor chart and walk students through the planning process. First, start with recognizing the audience. For instance, trying to convince parents to take you to Disneyland, or trying to convince your brother to start a paper route with you, or trying to convince your teacher to stop giving homework. Then have students plan their arguments.

After planning out the writing, students can write their rough copies. Give students time to edit their work. Finally, they can complete the good copies.

If you want to save yourself some time, I’ve created all these resources for you in my Persuasive Writing mini-unit package. There are detailed lesson plans broken down into five parts, differentiated planning pages, writing pages, a checklist to help with their editing, and evaluation pages for their writing. There is even a digital template included for distance learning or Google Classroom

Spend less time planning!

Looking for a FAST way to plan out a persuasive writing unit? In just a few clicks you can grab all of the pieces you need: a lesson plans, anchor chart samples, planning pages, rough and good copy student sheets, and assessment! Just print… that’s it.

grab the whole unit

Share the Persuasive Writing - Ideally, with a Real Audience

After the good copies are finished, I love giving my students a chance to share their writing with an audience. If they wrote letters, they could read the letters to the appropriate people. They could post their essays on a bulletin board for people to read. They could read their persuasive writing to their peers. I think sharing and celebrating the finished product is important!

The art of persuasion is important. Teaching persuasive writing can be time-consuming, but it’s so worth it in the end. 

Text: Authentic Ways to Teach Persuasive Writing in Third Grade
Image: Text is displayed over school supplies

One thing I love to teach in 3rd Grade is Narrative Writing. Third Grade is the time when students can really engage with creative writing, the writing process and narrative writing. I especially love to teach students about finding ideas. So often our students have ideas locked inside their minds and they need the proper key in order to unlock all these great ideas. One of my favorite ways to unlock their great ideas is by using their favorite books and novels! It’s so funny how kids can go from completely stuck to full of ideas in the blink of an eye and this writing lesson totally helps with the question, “I don’t know what to write about!”

Text: Narrative Writing in Third Grade, Finding Writing Ideas
Image: Text is displayed over sharpened pencils.

Where Can Ideas Come From?

Image: “Ralph Tells A Story” by Abby Hanlon is displayed on a student desk.

So let’s talk about these ‘keys’ for a minute. As I said before, students often have ideas locked inside their minds and they need the proper key in order to unlock these great ideas. Where can Ideas come from? Kids are often stuck and need help finding ideas. I love using books to inspire ideas. I especially love the picture book “Ralph Tells a Story” for this. 

Ralph is a boy who really struggles to find an idea of what to write about. Over the course of the story, Ralph discovers that there are stories all around him! He could write about an inchworm in his backyard, the class goldfish, the markers in his desk….the stories are endless! My reluctant writers love this book because it’s funny and gives solutions for how to unlock their ideas. 

There are some other amazing books about finding ideas for writing..

• “What Do You Do with an Idea” by Kobi Yamada

• “Idea Jar” by Adam Lehrhaupt

• “Any Questions” by Marie-Louise Gay

Do you know of any other amazing books about ideas for writing? Send me a message, I’d love to add them to my list!

Use Books Students Love to Find Ideas

When teaching my students about narrative writing my absolute favorite thing to do is have students use books they already love to find ideas. I want to teach my students to draw on the books they are reading to inspire a new story during personal writing time. I like to tell my students that “Authors are inspired by what other authors have written”. So I want to teach my students to be inspired by the books around them. 

So the first step that I take while teaching this lesson is to brainstorm. We brainstorm stories we already know and love. Then we think of new adventures and ideas for these characters.

• Scaredy Squirrel - Let’s write a new adventure where Scaredy heads into space!

• The Magic Tree House - Jack and Annie visit our classroom!

• Who Would Win Books - We could write Butterfly vs. Bumblebee or Raccoon vs. Chihuahua 

Once students start thinking about books they are already reading, it gets easier for them to think of new ideas for the characters or book style! 

Model How to Create a New Story

Don’t forget to verbally model your through the process while you brainstorm. Students need to see how the writing process works. Creative writing first starts with creative thinking. Narrative writing begins with an internal dialogue with yourself. So don’t forget to model each step of the writing process during the writing lesson. This helps to prepare them for when they brainstorm their own story.

Wow!  We sure love Scaredy Squirrel! He’s so funny and he gets into so many silly adventures.  I wonder what else he could possibly get into?  Hmmm.  We’ve seen him be terrified to head to the beach.  I wonder how he’d feel about going to space!  What kind of things would he be scared of? How would he plan to head into zero gravity? What would he bring with him?

Write the Story 

After brainstorming ideas, I model how to create a new story. Then students will plan their story and then begin to write. After writing, I always give my students time to edit and then write their good copy. Sometimes I even let my students type their good copies on the computer.

In my Book Inspiration Writing Lesson package, I have a planning page, writing pages, and a checklist to help with their editing. There is even a digital template included in this package so students can type their good copies into a well-laid-out template.

Spend less time planning!

Looking for a FAST way to plan this writing lesson? In just a few clicks you can grab all of the pieces you need: a lesson plan, planning pages, rough and good copy student sheets, and assessment! Just print… that’s it.

grab the writing packet

Share The New Story

One thing that I’ve learned over my years of teaching is that it’s important to give students a chance to share their work. This gives them a sense of ownership of their work and it also instills pride for their hard work.

I like to mix up the way my students share their work. Sometimes I’ll create a class library of these new books. Students can read each other’s stories! (As a bonus, this may also give them new ideas for their next piece of narrative writing.) 

Other times I’ll host an Author’s Chair, where students have a special place to share excerpts from their stories with their classmates. I’ve even had my students publish their stories digitally on a secured classroom blog so parents can read the stories at home. Parents love to check out their children’s creative writing.

As you can probably tell, I love teaching the writing process to my 3rd Grade students. There is something special about teaching them about creative writing and narrative writing. Do you have any fun ways to teach the writing process to your students? Do you have any “go-to” third grade writing lessons?

First, kids learn letters. Second, they learn words. Then, they use phrases. Afterward, they use sentences. At some point, they learn transition words. Do you see what I did there? Transition words are important to help with the flow of writing. We, as adults, often use these words without even thinking about it. But we need to explicitly teach transition words to our students. So I thought I’d put together a list of some fun ways to teach transition words in third grade.

Text: 5 Ways to Teach Transition Words in Third Grade
Image: Two pencils are displayed on a red background

How Do You Teach Transition Words in Third Grade?

I think we can all agree that transition words are important. But we’ve all seen writing where students just repeat the same transition words over and over. How many times have we read an essay that has “And then…..And then…..And then…..” It’s up to us to explicitly teach transition words to our students. Otherwise, we’re doomed to read “And then….” essays for the rest of the school year. There are a variety of strategies that we can employ to help students learn their transition words. 

1. Write a Class Story Together

One way that I love to teach transition words is through modeled class stories. I will set up my flip chart with some transitional phrases. It might look something like this:

Once upon a time, there was a __________ and a _________.

First they _________________

Next they ________________.

Afterwards, they ________________. 

Finally, they ___________________. 

It was a _________ day.

Students love filling in the blanks together. In the end you might end up with a story like this:

Once upon a time, there was a frog and a duck. First they had a swimming competition. Next they went for lunch at McDonalds. Afterwards, they had a jumping competition. Finally, they went to bed because they were tired. It was a long and busy day.

Students like to create class stories together and share their ideas. After doing a story as a whole class, you could put students into groups and have them create their own stories, using the same template. Or you could have students create stories individually. Personally, I like doing it as a large group and then as small groups, because this fosters cooperation and communication skills.

2. Use Your Fingers

When students start thinking about the order of events in their story, I get students to use their fingers as they say each event. This helps them identify the order or first, second, third….and so on. Now, it’s OK if they use the “first, second, third…” as transition words, but you’ll also want to teach them other words to expand their vocabulary and make their writing flow better.

3. Create a Simple How-To Book

This is a super effective transition word resource that teaches students to use 3-4 transition words to write a simple instructional ‘how to’ story. As a class, we create a book titled “How to Do Almost Anything in Four Easy Steps!”. This helps to get students in the mindset of writing their ideas in the correct order and teaches the importance of basic transition words. I find that this is a great lesson for the beginning of the year. 

In this package, you’ll find sequence word cards to display in your classroom, planning paper, a self-assessment tool, the class book title page, and a variety of story papers for students to write on. 

4. Video the Outcome

To take this above resource one step further, you can have students create a step by step guide of how to make a peanut butter and jam sandwich, and then video the outcome. One of my teacher-friends does this with her class each year. First, she shows this video of a Dad recreating his children’s instructions for making a sandwich. It’s quite funny!

 After watching this video, the students have to write down instructions for how to make a peanut butter and jam sandwich. What the students don’t know is that my friend takes their instructions and creates a video of herself following the instructions. At one point, she even put peanut butter on her face because the student wrote “Put peanut butter on face.” 

Yes, this is a messy and silly idea. However, after this lesson, her students were extra careful when sequencing their writing. 

5. Traffic Light Transitions

I stumbled across the video below all about Traffic Light Transitions. It would be so easy to turn this into an anchor chart for the classroom. Students can help you brainstorm different transition words or phrases that belong in each section. 

Teaching transition words doesn’t have to be complicated. Even simple methods like these will help students to grasp the concept. And remember, the more students practice, the more adept they become at using transition words in their writing. 

BONUS IDEA: Practice transition words in journals

I am a huge fan of journal writing in third grade, it’s one of my favorite ways to build relationships and formatively assess writing. Once we have learned transition words, and students have access to a bank of transition words, personal journals are a great place to practice using them on a regular basis. Retelling events from our week naturally lends itself to using transition words, so it’s awesome practice. You can snag some of my favorite journal prompts below!

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Text: 5 Ways to teach transition words in third grade
Image: School supplies are displayed on a piece of paper.

Reading and Writing often go hand-in-hand. So what better way to teach a Writing lesson than by reading a book? Books offer a window into other people's writing styles. And having an example of how to write, makes it easier when it comes time for our students to put pencil to paper. Here are some awesome books for Writing lessons that will hopefully help to inspire your future authors, journalists, novelists, etc:

Lesson One: Finding an Idea for a Story

Ralph Tells a Story by Abby Hanlon

Ralph is a boy who just cannot find anything to write about. Boy, have I been there! There always seems to be someone in my classroom who is absolutely stumped during writing time. In the story, Ralph slowly discovers that stories are all around him! (He could write about the class goldfish or the inchworm he found in his backyard, or even the markers in his desk!) My reluctant writers get such a kick out of this book because it is both hilarious and gives actual solutions to their ‘writers block’.

I like to begin my ‘Ralph Tells a Story’ lesson by asking students the question, “Where do you find your Writing ideas?” Then, we write this on chart paper. As we read the story we pause to gather more ideas and add to our chart. I end the lesson by demonstrating that ideas can be found anywhere by writing a quick story as a group using something that has happened during our day. For example, “The Sweltering Classroom”, or “Mrs. Poetker’s Lost Keys”.

Then we are ready to write our own stories!  I already blogged about how we do narrative writing in third grade, check it out here!

Lesson Two: Writing With Juicy Details

Mole’s Sunrise by Jeanne Willis

This is a super descriptive story about two animals who embark on a journey to see the sunrise. One friend (Vole) describes the sunrise to the other (Mole) using vivid imagery. At the end of the book, we discover that Mole is blind, but because of his friend’s descriptions, he feels like he has seen a sunrise too.

With this book, I teach a lesson on using juicy details in writing. When I teach the lesson, I give students picture books (including this one) and strips of paper. They have to pick their favorite descriptive sentences for inspiration and write them down. We collect all these sentences on a flip chart. Then, I challenge my students to write their own descriptive sentences. And, as I’m sure you know, prompts are awesome ways to get students thinking about an idea. Try the prompt “My Imaginary Place” or “My Favorite Season”. You’ll be surprised at what your students come up with!

Later, this leads into a great sharing activity, where students share their sentences and give feedback to each other.

Lesson Three: Writing a Letter

Dear Teacher by Amy Husband

Letter writing is an art form that seems to be lost, but I think it’s still so important for students to learn how to write a proper letter. Dear Teacher naturally leads into a fun-filled lesson on how to write a letter.

This book is a collection of imaginative letters written by a student, named Michael, who does not want to go back to school. Michael comes up with the most elaborate and hilarious excuses, which he writes in letter form to his teacher.

After reading this story, my students write a letter to me in the same style as Michael. They must explain why they cannot return to school for the remainder of the year. This also serves as an awesome first day of school activity. Lots of giggles and smiles will happen during this lesson.

Lesson Four: Fractured Fairytales

The Three Little Pigs and the Somewhat Bad Wolf by Mark Teague

I love a good fairy tale! Who doesn’t? And my all time favorite fairytale is “The Three Little Pigs”. My students are also obsessed with the story of the Three Little Pigs. This book, as you might be able to tell from the title, is a twist on the classic story. It’s also a book for kicking off lessons on fractured fairy tales.

After reading the original version of the Three Little Pigs, my students and I will read this version together. Then we compare the two stories and discuss what makes The Three Little Pigs and the Somewhat Bad Wolf special. Through discussion, they will discover that a fractured fairytale takes the original story and changes an element or two. We then brainstorm how we could change other stories.

Later, I have them write their own fractured fairy tales. They love the challenge!

Lesson Five: Writing Stories With a ‘Hook’

Click, Clack, Moo: Cows that Type by Doreen Cronin

Doreen Cronin certainly has a way with words. I love her stories! She uses repetition, not only to make her stories hilarious but also give them character. In this story, the cows are airing their grievances with Farmer Brown by writing him letters on a typewriter. The key repetitive phrase is “Click, Clack, Moo!”

Click, Clack, Moo is great for teaching students the concept of story writing with repetitive phrases. These are the phrases that the reader can latch onto when reading. Try brainstorming some of your own phrases that would sound silly when repeated and try writing a group story using them as the ‘hook’!

As you can see, I have a lot of fun teaching my students how to write. I enjoy reading the things they come up with. And I love seeing how they develop as writers. Do you have a subject that you’re super passionate about teaching? Share what it is in the comments below!

Teaching students to write great narrative stories can be a daunting task. Characters?  Setting?  Plot?  Problem?  Solution?  Do it all at the same time?!  How can we, as teachers, make sure that students are understanding the complexities of narrative writing, using their new skills effectively, and having fun? As I have taught story writing to class after class of third grade students, I have found a few things to be most valuable year after year.  Take a peek at my 6 must-do strategies for writing stories in third grade!

Teaching Students to Write Stories Tip #1: Find good anchor books

Anchor books are key to kicking off a new unit and helping key concepts to really 'stick'.  This year, I have a class of kids who will do almost anything for "just one more story" and who am I to say no?

Ralph Tells a Story by Abby Hanlon

This is one of my all time favourite Writing anchor books, especially for encouraging struggling writers.  In this story we follow the main character as he learns that anything can be the inspiration for a good story.  Great ideas for writing are all around us!

Chester's Masterpiece by Melanie Watt

This book is a great story during the 'editing' stage of writing.  Chester, a precocious cat, playfully argues with the narrator about the best ways to write his own story.  It's a great way to introduce the need for students to edit and revise their work in order to produce quality writing.

Teaching Students to Write Stories Tip #2: Choose a theme for your stories

At times, broad writing topics such as "write a story about whatever you want"  can be overwhelming for third grade students.  After a miserable failure with this my first year in third grade, I began narrowing down the options and giving each class a theme.  This helps to guide our mini-lessons and allows me to teach specific skills related to a particular genre of a narrative story.  Here are a few of the themes that we have enjoyed:

• Animal Stories

• Who-done-it Stories

• Time-Travel Stories (inspired by 'The Magic Treehouse')

• Space Stories

• Under-the-Sea stories

Teaching Students to Write Stories Tip #3: Model writing as a group

Throughout the story writing unit, I always take time to model the story-writing process through a collaborative class book.   We take an idea and explore it all the way from idea to rough draft, and finally correct it and write a good copy as a group. I like to use chart paper so students can see me physically writing out the story in real-time, and modeling how to craft each aspect of the narrative story.  We add a little more to our story each day!  Through practicing whole-group writing, students are are able to carry out each skill with greater confidence when they begin to write independently.

Teaching Students to Write Stories Tip #4: Teach an important skill each day

As students write their whole-class story, they are also introduced to a new writing skill daily.  It is during this short lesson that they are introduced to vital story writing techniques such as:

• How to brainstorm ideas before you begin

• Planning to have a beginning, middle, and end

• Turning a plan into a creative story

• Creating an engaging topic sentence

• Using dialogue

• Using punctuation

• Crafting complex and compound sentences

• Ending stories in a satisfying way

Pictured above: Detailed story planning pages, used to teach pre-writing skills via graphic organizers.

Plan Your Narrative Writing With One Click

Looking for a FAST way to plan out your Narrative Writing unit that includes all of the graphic organizers to create AMAZING stories? In just a few clicks you can grab all of the pieces you need: teaching instructions, planning pages, rough and good copy space, AND a rubric. Click and print. Planning is really that easy.

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Teaching Students to Write Stories Tip #5: Conference one-on-one

Once students have begun their independent writing time (immediately following the mini-lesson, and modeled whole-group write) I pull 3-4 students for one-on-one conferences.  Here I am quickly able to give personalized help. For my struggling students, we can work on adding capital letters and punctuation to their sentences.  For my advanced writers, we may be working towards developing a more complex plotline.  This one-on-one time is vital for developing differentiated instruction.

I help my students to self edit each page of their work as well as to do a final edit with a peer (if they are ready) or with me if they need more one-on-one assistance.

After students have completed a quick checklist on each written page, they do a larger edit using this page.  (Available in my story writing unit)

Teaching Students to Write Stories Tip #6: Share, Share, Share

Inspire students to keep on writing by allowing them to share their work out loud, even in the incomplete stages!  As often as I am able, I love to allow students to stand up (at their desks, or on the carpet) and share out loud their favorite 4-5 sentences from their current piece of writing.  It helps them to build confidence as authors.

As you continue I continue in this process I may also allow the rest of the class to offer up "Two Stars and a Wish".  The "stars" are things that they love about the piece of work, and the "wish" is something that they wish the piece would have.

We also love binding our work into final books to send home to our families. It gives students a sense of pride when their stories feel valued by their teacher.  I love creating class books featuring all 24 of my little authors!

Check out my Story Writing Unit on Teachers Pay Teachers to create easy all-in-one booklets for your students.  All of the pages and templates seen in this post can be found in that unit (along with many more!)

Do you have any tried-and-true tips for teaching story writing?  I'd love to hear them in the comments below.  Happy Writing!