Hello followers! It's obviously been a long time since I've written on this blog. I still keep my TeachersPayTeachers store updated, so I suggest you subscribe to me over there to stay more "in the know." My TpT Store
I am happy to say that I have five writing projects over on my Teachers Pay Teachers store! I think writing is absolutely one of the most important skills a person can learn. My knowledge and experience with writing has impacted my personal life in so many ways. In high school, I wrote articles for our local newspaper's "teen" section and wrote for the school newspaper. I loved and enjoyed these things and they also gave me more to put on my college applications. In college, because of my past experience, I was able to actually make money by writing for my college yearbook. That is one of the best jobs I have ever had- doing what I loved, being involved in my school, and getting a stipend for it.
Being able to write well is almost always a prerequisite for getting into college and is often part of a job application process as well. Many jobs require writing almost daily- whether emails or reports. As you can see, I've given a lot of thought to the importance of writing.
Knowing that writing is so important, I sometimes struggle with how to teach it to my special education students. Their writing ranges from being unable to form a correct sentence to being unable to incorporate research information into their writing. In addition, I try to focus on the grade level standards as much as possible. The writing project templates I have created on my Teacher's Pay Teachers Store are extremely structured. Most of them have sentence starters and blank spaces for students to fill in. Everything is created with scaffolding in mind so students can start with the most basic and move into a completed essay. I have made changes based upon watching my students use these templates. For example, most of my students were marking off the peer editing checklist without actually doing the steps, so I added an editing checklist that requires them to "make up" their essays so I can quickly tell whether or not they did the steps. I am very proud of the fact that my students write compare/contrast, persuasive, etc. essays like their general education peers, just with more supports. I hope that these essay projects will help you with your students, too!
