Do you have students who hate to practice writing? Over the past 20 years of teaching, almost every student I have had in my special education class has disliked writing. It is challenging and often a very difficult task for my students. Sometimes just hearing about a writing task can send my students over the edge. Here are 3 different ways I “sneak” extra writing practice into our school day.
First things first…. Do not label these activities as writing!! When you label the task for students as something else (ex: question of the day time), then students will think of it that way. Labeling it writing time automatically makes a student who hates writing bristle.
Question of the day
All of students have autism or another language based disability, so most of our day is made up of language based tasks and activities. I originally thought of adding a question of the day time to target answering questions with my students. Then, I realized that it could be even more beneficial by adding in a writing component. Best part… it is basically no prep! Win!! To make the poster, I just added a title and my students name to a lined chart paper and then laminated it. Every morning, I write a new question on the top of the poster. During snack time, I have students take turns coming up to write their answer.
You can practice answering a variety of questions. We do yes or no questions.
This or that questions:
Personal questions, etc.
Lunch Form
Another way to add in writing is have students help make the lunch list. Every morning my students order what they are going to eat for lunch as soon as they arrive. When they go to the cafeteria for lunch, students are required to tell the kitchen staff what they ordered. Guess what? They can’t always remember what they ordered! To solve this problem, we make a list of what everyone ordered to take with us. Now, we have students make the list.
Signing In
My last tip is to have a place to write their names when the arrive at school to say they are here. now only is this great writing practice, but it is a needed life skill. How many times have you gone to an appointment and have been asked to sign in? Students need to know how to do it neatly and quickly. Here is what I use. Again, it was very simple to use and just needs to be wiped off daily.
To extend this activity a little, once everyone has arrived I ask a student to write the names of anyone absent on the not here list.
Do you have any tips for sneaking in some extra writing practice? Please add them to the comment section so we can all learn!
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Great Ideas. Can't wait to share your post with our sped teachers!
Thanks for sharing Cathy!
I love this idea! I can also use it to graph our responses in math! Thank you for sharing!
That's what we've been doing, too! I plan to post more info on how we are adding in graphing to these ideas next week.
Pam
Love the question of the day, Pam. Great idea! I pinned it too!