Americans write every day, every week, all year long, in many different forms and for many different purposes. To draw attention to the richness and variety of our writing experiences, the National Council of Teachers of English has established October 20 as the National Day on Writing. This is a perfect time to host a celebration of writing! The following resources from ReadWriteThink.org provide suggestions for writing celebrations.
A Bear of a Poem: Composing and Performing Found Poetry asks students to revisit familiar childhood stories. They then work together to create a poem that is “found” in the language presented in the picture books they read. Children will look in texts for writing that inspires them—looking for favorite words, phrases, and sentences. Working together, students will combine their words and phrases to create a class poem. When complete, the new written piece can be shared as performance poetry.
Children love to receive mail. Can you imagine their excitement if they received a picture postcard at school? That’s what happens in Mail Time! An Integrated Postcard and Geography Study. Children will write and receive postcards from friends and family, and then chart where all those postcards come from on their classroom map. The most fun of this project is reading and sharing the written postcards that are received.
What Am I? Teaching Poetry through Riddles invites students to investigate riddle poems and the language used in them. They discover that riddle attempts to use language in such a way as to present common things as unfamiliar and then asks its readers/listeners to guess what it is. Students write their own riddles that they can share with their peers or in a class sharing session.
In Rummaging for Fiction: Using Found Photographs and Notes to Spark Story Ideas, students use found notes and photographs as prompts to help them identify subjects, settings, characters, and conflicts for pieces of creative writing. They can then display the notes and images along with their writing and host a Gallery Walk to share their pieces with others.
The Children’s Picture Book Project begins with students evaluating published children’s picture storybooks. Students then plan, write, illustrate, and publish their own children’s picture books. These books can then be shared with reading buddies, siblings, or as part of a writing celebration.
For more celebration ideas, see NCTE’s Ideas for Celebrating the National Day on Writing.