Student Writing Practice

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Writing Overview
Using the Writing Activities

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VocabularySpellingCity has two activities for students to practice writing using their word lists. These activities help students simultaneously develop their vocabulary and writing skills.

The two activities, Sentence Writing Practice and Paragraph Writing Practice, can be customized in two ways:

VocabularySpellingCity offers a number of sample instructions for writing practice activities. Select one of ours or create your own custom instructions to fit within your lesson plans or to focus on a particular concept. Use your own creativity to encourage creativity to foster creativity in your students. Sample writing instructions are shown below.

Sentence Writing Instructions	Paragraph Writing Instructions
Practice writing your own sentences.	Using the words above, write a paragraph below.
Write a definition for each word.	Write an expository paragraph using your word list.
Write a synonym for each word.	Write a narrative paragraph using your word list.
Write a riddle for each word on your list.	Write a poem using your word list.
Write an analogy for each word on your list.	Write a persuasive article using your word list.

Choose from a selection of instructional videos to accompany your customized writing practice instructions. Students can view these videos prior to beginning their writing practice activity to help prepare them for the task at hand. Topics include subject/verb agreement, comma rules, topic sentences, supporting details, and narrative paragraphs. See full list below.

Sentence Writing Videos
Subject/Verb Agreement	Students learn the basic idea of subject verb agreement and what to look for when choosing the correct verb form.
Crazy Commas	Students learn three basic comma rules and view examples to help them better understand.
More Comma Rules	Students learn additional comma rules, why proper comma usage is important and how they help make the meaning of a sentence clear.
Declarative & Interrogative Sentences	Students learn about these two different sentence types and what the end punctuation should be for each one.
Imperative & Exclamatory Sentences	Students learn what each of these sentence types accomplish, view examples of each and learn about the punctuation used for each one.

Paragraph Writing Videos
Topic Sentence	Students learn what the topic sentence does, view examples and a good formula to remember when writing a topic sentence.
Supporting Details	Students learn what supporting details are, how they build a paragraph, what kind of information they can include and how they relate to the topic sentence.
Closing Sentence	Students learn what a closing sentence, or concluding sentence is, what it accomplishes and where it goes within a paragraph.
Punctuating Compound Sentences	Students learn what a compound sentence is and what a run on sentence is. They also learn how to fix a run on sentence by using proper punctuation and linking words, or coordinating conjunctions.
Don't Get Into A Sentence Rut	Students learn how to avoid having all their sentences sound the same and make them more interesting by switching the words around.
Descriptive Paragraphs	Students learn how to write descriptive paragraphs by using adjectives and actions verbs. They also learn how to 'paint a picture' for their reader using the five senses.
Narrative Paragraphs	Students learn what a narrative paragraph must do and read two examples of well-written narrative paragraphs.

You may also want to include student writing prompts as part of your instructions. Why not have students write a riddle for each of their spelling words, then have them share their riddles with the class for a fun study session? Instruct students to write expository or narrative paragraphs to help prepare for standardized testing. Encourage creative writing by asking them to write poems or short stories using their word lists. The possibilities are endless! Remember, any instructions that you submit are a contribution to VocabularySpellingCity. We periodically review the instructions, and when we find ones we like, we may publish them for other teachers and parents to use.


Try Sentence Writing Practice	Try Paragraph Writing Practice

Printable worksheets may also be created for both Sentence Writing Practice and Paragraph Writing Practice. Students also have an opportunity to create a PDF of their completed work, which may be printed or saved.

Writing practice activities are submitted to teachers electronically. Students also have the option to save their work and resume their writing practice at a later time or date. Teachers can grade their writing online, adding comments and/or emoticons before returning the graded activities to the students. Students (and their parents) can access their grades anytime!

Consult the Help box on the Writing page for training videos on related topics, links to our FAQs and printable PDFs about writing practice activities. From here, you can also print or download class writing activity reports.

This writing activity on VocabularySpellingCity has been underwritten by Time4Learning.com (homeschooling curriculum for elementary school and middle school study) and Time4Writing.com (online writing instruction help for schools and extra writing help direct to families)

Both of these activities were suggested by VocabularySpellingCity users and we are very grateful to the community for their suggestions. While we can't respond to every idea or implement them as fast as we'd like, we really appreciate the feedback. Facebook turns out to be the focal point for much of this discussion. If you enjoy VocabularySpellingCity, we invite you to "Like" us on Facebook and participate in the discussion.We also invite teachers who are members of Edmodo to join our VocabularySpellingCity community on that site as well!