Activities for Teaching Writing to Young Learners

Kinesthetic letter formation and spelling: If you don’t want to bring food into the classroom, you can also have students form letters using ribbon or clay. They can play a game by writing words with their fingers or a chopstick on classmates’ backs; the classmate has to guess what word was written.

Games and art: When students are able to write single words, they can play hangman, which requires attention to the alphabet and spelling. Those who like to draw may enjoy various forms of word art, forming images with the letters that spell a given word (see examples of word art animals, or typography art objects). They can also start writing acrostic poems in which you write a word vertically and then choose a related word that starts with each of the letters.

Using Images

Incorporating multimodal elements allows lower proficiency writers to create meaningful texts that go beyond what they are able to say in words. With technology resources, learners can tell complex stories or illustrate their thoughts in more detail.

•