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Home › Classroom Resources › Calendar Activities
October 20
Celebrate the National Day on Writing!
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| Grades | K – 12 |
| Calendar Activity Type | Literacy-Related Event |
To draw attention to the remarkable variety of writing Americans engage in and to help make writers from all walks of life aware of their craft, the National Council of Teachers of English has established October 20 as the National Day on Writing. To celebrate composition in all its forms, NCTE invites participants to read and reflect on the pieces submitted to the National Gallery of Writing.
Encourage your students to uncover all of the different kinds of writing they do on a daily basis by asking them to keep a list of everything they write, from text messages to school assignments, e-mails to diary entries, in a single day.
After students make a list of everything they wrote in a day, help them see the variety in their writing, both individually and as a class. Post colorful chart paper with age-appropriate questions about purpose, audience, genre or type, and technology around the room. Ask students to brainstorm different categories for each poster based on the writing they did. Write these categories on the posters and then have students contribute examples from their personal lists. Facilitate a gallery walk of the posters once students have contributed to all of them.
Encourage students to visit the National Gallery of Writing to view and reflect on all kinds of writing--no matter the purpose, audience, type, or technology.
- The National Day on Writing
Here you will find information about the National Day on Writing initiative, as well as links to a variety of NCTE writing resources and tips for getting involved or starting a local gallery within the National Gallery.
- National Gallery of Writing
The National Gallery, which opened on October 20, 2009, is the virtual centerpiece for the National Day on Writing intiative. Here, visitors can browse galleries of all types of writing.
- NCTE Position Statements on Writing
This collection of position statements includes the "NCTE Beliefs about the Teaching of Writing" and "Writing Now: A Policy Research Brief."
- National Writing Project
This is the online home of the NWP, a professional development network with the mission of improving student achievement by improving the teaching of writing and improving learning in the nation's schools.
Grades 3 – 5 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
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Students discuss and chart letter elements and write their own letters to adults at school, reinforcing letter-writing skills beyond the classroom lesson.
Grades 6 – 8 | Lesson Plan | Minilesson
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Students explore using electronic messaging and Internet abbreviations for specific purposes and examine the importance of using a more formal style of writing based on their audience.
Grades 9 – 12 | Lesson Plan | Unit
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Students will create a beginning resume that represents their current work experience and demonstrates their knowledge of rhetorical situations for professional writing.
Grades 3 – 5 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
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Grades 3 – 5 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
Cultural Connections and Writing for Change
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Grades 3 – 5 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
Get Cooking With Words! Creating a Recipe Using Procedural Writing
Students participate in read-alouds of books that exemplify effective word choice, explore how to choose words to best communicate an idea, and then write explicit instructions for a recipe.
Grades K – 2 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
Family Message Journals Teach Many Purposes for Writing
This lesson encourages children to explore authentic reasons for writing by writing messages to their family in a family message journal.
Grades 3 – 5 | Lesson Plan | Recurring Lesson
Write-Talks: Students Discovering Real Writers, Real Audiences, Real Purposes
There’s a world of writers out there, and in this lesson students discover them as they listen to presentations from local writers and learn about what, why, and how they write in their day-to-day lives..
Grades K – 2 | Lesson Plan | Recurring Lesson
Note Writing in the Primary Classroom
This lesson provides a wealth of ideas for using notes in the classroom to promote authentic writing among children.
