If your elementary-aged students are ready to write a research report, here are two resources to help them.
Just the Facts walks students through a basic overview of each of the tools they will use in their report, from starting with a topic to making a bibliography.
Don't Be a Copycat!  is intended for the older elementary crowd, its content going deeper, including more detailed information about plagiarizing, assessing sources, taking notes, and citing sources. As the title indicates, the goal is to teach students how to avoid plagiarism.

Writing a research report need not be daunting. With their step-by-step instructions and conversational tone, both of these books will ground your children for the challenge before them.
 
Do apple seeds dream happily of growing up to be a tree?

How many little fish might see the stone I throw into the sea?
These are questions Marcus Pfister asks in his simple picture book Questions, Questions. Since we know curious children are an endless collection of questions, let's record some of them. Give students a sheet of paper with the title "Questions, Questions."  When they ask questions throughout the day, direct them to the paper, where they can write them. Add the questions, one after another, until students have a healthy list.

If your students are young, they can write and illustrate their best questions in a mini-book. Assignment accomplished.  If they are older, you can expand this assignment, having them follow the example of Pfister whose questions are couplets 14-16 syllables long. Now they will have to figure out how to revise their questions, making them sound poetic with rhythm and rhyme.

If your students do this assignment, please include their best questions in the comments!
 
My daughter's Advanced Placement teacher used exercises from Voice Lessons to help her students develop their writing voices.

Each lesson is one page, including a quotation from literature which illustrates one of five categories--diction, detail, imagery, syntax, and tone--a couple of questions to lead students to examine the text closely, and a short assignment for application. In less than twenty minutes per lesson, students can learn to read as writers, appreciating what authors do well and practicing it in their own writing.
Discovering Voice is similar to Voice Lessons, except that it's intended for a slightly younger crowd. The quotations come from less advanced literature, and a sixth category--figurative language--is added. I used this resource with my 9th and 10th grade students last year, many of whom hadn't been in a prior formal writing class.
Two recommendations:
With either book, discuss the quotations, so that students have the privilege of both sharing and hearing insights.

View the exercises as tools to help students unveil the craft behind the words, not as worksheets to be completed halfheartedly.
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Five Minute Friday kids edition
I went on an unplanned online journey yesterday and ended up at Lisa-Jo Baker's site, where I learned about Five Minute Friday. Each Friday, Lisa-Jo posts a word, her readers sit and write for five minutes about that word without editing or self-critiquing (at least that's the idea), they link their results, and they encourage the person who linked before them.  One of Lisa-Jo's readers, a mom at Desperate Homeschoolers, has regularly participated in Five Minute Friday , inviting her eight-, six-, and two-year-old daughters to join her, writing or drawing as they are able. Until recently, she has linked their work with hers.  Now it has a special spot, and your children's writing can be there, too, on the Five Minute Friday: Kids' Edition!

What a perfect way for moms and their children to write together with an achievable weekly goal and an audience.

Friday is coming! Cast the vision. Find some loose paper or start a writer's notebook. Sharpen the pencils. Ready...Set...Write!
 

I like using Harvey S. Wiener's idea from Any Child Can Write (68-69) to help young or reluctant writers transform a simple sentence. 

Begin with a simple sentence. In his example, Wiener uses "A child played."

Describe the Child: A child with brown eyes played.

Tell When: A child with brown eyes played one crisp winter morning.

Name a Sound: Giggling, a child with brown eyes played one crisp winter morning.

Tell Where: Giggling in front of his house, a child with brown eyes played one crisp winter morning.

Use Other Specific Words: Giggling in front of his house, a boy with brown eyes jumped up and down one crisp winter morning.

Once the student is happy with his improved sentence, ask him to rearrange it several times.

  • A boy with brown eyes jumped up and down one crisp winter morning, giggling in front of his house.
  • A boy with brown eyes, giggling in front of his house, jumped up and down one crisp winter morning.
  • Jumping up and down one crisp winter morning, a boy with brown eyes giggled in front of his house.
  • Giggling, a boy with brown eyes  jumped up and down in front of his house one crisp winter morning.
  • In front of his house, a giggling boy with brown eyes jumped up and down one crisp winter morning.

Possible discussion cues:
    Have the student rank his sentences from his most favorite one to his least favorite one.
    Notice how the punctuation changes from one sentence to another.
    Discuss what happens to the sentence when the subject is not mentioned immediately.

Other simple sentences from Wiener (69):
A man worked.
The book fell.
A tree moved.
The car drove away.
A cloud passed by.
A woman danced.
A girl ran.
The baby cried.
The radio played.
She pulled him.
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When my oldest daughter was little, her aunt gave her a butterfly garden.  What a delight for her (and me) to watch the process of metamorphosis! Of course, even though she was five, I couldn't let the writing opportunity pass us by!  I asked her to keep a record of her observations which then went into a book she illustrated. This assignment worked so well that I did it with my other daughters when they were old enough to make their own books.

Who: preschool and elementary-aged children

What: To connect writing with science, students watch the process of metamorphosis, keeping a record of their observations and making a  simple book.
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Excerpts from Janessa's dictated text:

April 13
When we came home from church, my mom noticed that there were two cocoons on the lid, and me and my sisters were really excited because we knew they would be coming out soon.

April 15
Today there was a problem. One caterpillar on the bottom was very confused about where to make his cocoon. But there was another problem.  It wasn't that he was on the bottom; it was that his cocoon didn't have the color it should. It was green.

April 22
Today one of my butterflies has a broken wing. My mom, my sisters, and I were all sorry for my little butterfly. I was about to cry when my mom noticed it because I didn't want my little tiny butterfly to be dead.

Today one of the cocoons dropped from the lid and went under the grass, so my mom, my sisters, and I couldn't see him. And he changed under the grass so we wouldn't see him so he would have privacy.
The entries were good practice with non-fiction writing, but with interest in the butterflies high, I also asked them to write a fiction piece, a short story about a caterpillar-turned-butterfly.

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Michaiah's story:

Once there was a caterpillar named Katie. One day she decided to make a cocoon and she took a hammer and nails and began hammering the nails around herself.  Then she stayed there for sixteen days and on the seventeenth day she decided to try to get out of the cocoon.  Then she nibbled and nibbled but she could not get out.  So she hollered for help but no one came so she kept hollering for help but still no one heard her.  Finally, she gave up and wiggled so much that the cocoon fell and broke a hole in it.  Then she got out and was a beautiful butterfly.   The End.

We couldn't miss out on good published books that explain and illustrate metamorphosis. Here are some titles:

From Caterpillar to Butterfly by Deborah Heiligman
Butterflies and Caterpillars by Barrie Watts
The Caterpillar and the Polliwog by Jack Kent
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

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A Related Idea
My husband said he knew we were homeschoolers when we incubated chicks in the dining room of our townhouse.  That incredible process was also recounted in a small book, this time with transitional words (i.e. then, next, now) instead of dates.

A Related Story
We also watched tadpoles become frogs. Seemingly not keen on his home, one jumped out and landed behind the faucet of our kitchen sink, his transformation halted. (Uh, he died.)  Not finding a single man in the neighborhood to remove him, I scraped and flipped him to the first place I could think of: the disposal.  I dropped some other scraps down there and flicked the switch, trying hard not to think about what was happening. We didn't have any related writing projects! : )

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Who: Students of any age

What: Write a story based on a series of pictures.

I love using these “Bad Parenting” pictures as a writing prompt. The stories students write are generally creative and fun.

Prewriting: Invite your students to study the pictures, asking a list of W and H questions—who, what, when, where, why, how—and answering with as much detail as possible, orally or on paper.

Note: The teacher need not be the one to think of and ask the questions. Allowing students to brainstorm their own questions is a valuable learning tool as well.

Here are some of my questions.
  • What are the ducks’ names?
  • How many ducklings are there in the first frame? The second? The last?
  • If the ducks were personified, what would they be saying?
  • Where are they coming from? 
  • Where are they going? 
  • What is happening outside the borders of each picture?
  • What is the weather like? 
  • When Mama Duck looks in the grate, what does she see?
  • What happened before the first picture? 
  • What happened after the last picture?
  • What is Mama Duck thinking?

Once students have studied the pictures and answered their questions, they may be ready to write. Let them.  Others may need additional props.  If so, you may want to offer graphic organizers to help them see their story develop.  Maybe a beginning/middle/end graphic organizer would be useful.  This story map or this story map may also be just what they need.

Drafting: Once students are ready, release them to capture these pictures in words as creatively and imaginatively as possible. Editing comes later, so they need not be hindered by conventions now.

Revising: When the first draft is finished, commend your students but also remind them that there is more work to do. There are many ways to approach the revision part of the writing process and, with time, I hope to include many ideas on this site. For now, let's look at some of Ruth Culham's writing traits: ideas, organization, voice, sentence fluency, and word choice.  Choose one (or as many as your students can handle) to address. You will find an excellent starting point with these revision sticky notes here.  (Included is one for  "Conventions," which you can use for editing.)

Publishing:  The process is complete; now it's time to celebrate the product.  Add it to a collection of other pieces and make a coil bound book. Make a spiffy copy, including the pictures, and share it with Grandma.  Send it to me to publish. I just added a Student Showcase to this site!

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Who: For students in grades 5-8

What: Using two selections about the same situation--one simple and one more complex--students first notice the differences between them, then write simple and complex pieces of their own.

How: Begin by inviting students to read the excerpts from each of the mentor texts below, writing their observations and discussing them.  What are their impressions about each excerpt?  Which one do they like better?

Together, analyze the texts for sentence length, sentence openers, kinds of punctuation, ability to paint a picture in the reader’s mind, point of view, etc.  Begin to use showing vs. telling terminology.

If you can find the two books in a local library, check them out.  Wait to show them until the discussion is complete, so they are not biased by the books themselves. I think they will be amused to see that the first selection comes from an easy reader.

When students understand how the two texts differ, give them one of two tasks. 

        Option #1:  Rewrite the two selections, developing the simple one  and simplifying the complex one.

        Option #2:  Write two similar scenes, one that simply tells about the scene with short sentences and sparse details, the other that shows the scene with varied sentences and rich details.

When students have completed their drafts, ask them to share highlights from their simple and complex pieces.  Which one do they prefer?  Which one was easier to write? Draw boxes around each sentence. How do  the widths of the boxes compare from one piece to the other?  Highlight the sentence openers.  Is there variety? What is their strongest detail? 

Allow time to revise and edit the pieces before putting them away.  (And consider sending me the pieces to add to my Student Showcase!)

Selection #1

From I Am Rosa Parks by Rosa Parks with Jim Haskins

 “One day I was riding on a bus.  I was sitting in one of the seats in the back section for black people.  The bus started to get crowded.  The front seats filled up with white people.  One white man was standing up.  The bus driver looked back at us black people sitting down.  The driver said, ‘Let me have those seats.’ He wanted us to get up and give our seats to white people.  But I was tired of doing that.  I stayed in my seat.  This bus driver said to me, ‘I’m going to have you arrested.’ ‘You may do that,’ I said.  And I stayed in my seat.  Two policemen came.  One asked me, ‘Why didn’t you stand up?’ I asked him, ‘Why do you push us black people around?”

Selection #2

From Rosa by Nikki Giovanni

 “Rosa settled her sewing bag and her purse near her knees, trying not to crowd Jimmy’s father.  Men take up more space, she was thinking as she tried to squish her packages closer.  The bus made several more stops, and the two seats opposite her were filled by blacks.  She sat on her side of the aisle daydreaming about her good day and planning her special meal for her husband.

 ‘I said give me those seats!’ the bus driver bellowed.  Mrs. Parks looked up in surprise.  The two men on the opposite side of the aisle were rising to move into the crowded black section.  Jimmy’s father muttered, more to himself than anyone else, ‘I don’t feel like trouble today.  I’m gonna move.’

 Mrs. Parks stood to let him out, looked at James Blake the bus driver, and then sat back down.

 ‘You better make it easy on yourself!” Blake yelled.

 ‘Why do you pick on us?’ Mrs. Parks asked with that quiet strength of hers.

 ‘I’m going to call the police!” Blake threatened.

 ‘Do what you must,’ Mrs. Parks quietly replied.  She was not frightened.  She was not going to give in to that which was wrong.”
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Our kids know how to e-mail, chat, and text.  Do they know how to write a personal letter? Last year, I gave my eighth graders regular opportunities to write letters  by pairing them with senior citizens they had never met. Their assignment was to write monthly to their new friend, asking questions, answering questions, and developing a relationship. At the end of the year, when all those goals were accomplished, they used the research they gleaned from the letters and wrote a biography of their pen pal. They then adapted their paper into a speech, which they presented to the pen pals at their first face-to-face meeting.

Of all the assignments and projects they completed during the year, this was by far the most successful, establishing enduring relationships and giving students a real reason for writing and public speaking.

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Micah and Arlene
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Rosie and Rosie (and Rosie's mom)
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Leah and Dot
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Ethel and Lianna (and Lianna's mom)
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Sara and Jonas
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David and Alyssa--This was the only sad part of the project. Alyssa's pen pal was David's wife Joyce until she suddenly passed away.
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You know you're not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but these covers do not contain what you may suppose. You likely assume that the authors of these books are Doreen Cronin, Janice M. Del Negro, and Audrey Wood. If so, you are wrong. In fact, the authors are my daughters.

The local library had a crate of extra book jackets to give away, so I took a pile of them.  The girls each chose their favorite one; then, using clues from the title and cover illustration, they wrote their own stories. 

To make these books a little sturdier, we glued pieces of cardstock inside the front and back covers; we also printed their stories on cardstock.  To hold it all together, we anchored the pages by stapling along the left side.

After they were finished, we found the original stories to read and compare.

This simple idea inspires creativity while giving kids a starting point, taking away the dread of filling a blank piece of paper, leaving them with real writing they will be eager to share.

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Not into fiction?  Find a jacket for a non-fiction book.  I tutored a boy who would rather trap and skin mice than read or write. He chose the Amazing Sharks! book cover, researched his favorite sharks, wrote a paragraph about each one, and drew simple illustrations to go with his text. It still wasn't as riveting as playing with mice, but at least he could accomplish his mom's goals while studying nature, his other passion.

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