How do we teach young students to get ideas for writing? It’s a process of inspiring students, setting the right tone, building the right habits, and teaching them specific idea-generation techniques. My goal is always to create a classroom full of writers as I teach writing across the curriculum. To achieve this goal, I teach students to always think about writing. Students quickly learn that they may be required to pick up a pencil and begin writing at any moment of the day, so they do start to think about writing as they live their lives.
To be clear, it’s difficult to teach writing if your students can’t come up with ideas. You may wish to read some of these posts:
1. 250+ Types of Ideas for Creating Powerful, Logical, and Effective Writing
2. How Do Great Writers and Thinkers Get Their Ideas? How Should You Get Your Ideas?
3. Six Traits of Writing: Why IDEAS is the Most Essential Trait
4. Complete Explanation of Creative Thinking as a Life Skill
5. Six Traits: How to Teach Ten Powerful Concepts About Great Ideas
6. Prewriting for Writing Success: Better Ideas, Better Organization
The easiest way to teach students to get ideas is to do massive brainstorms on the front board as a class and group the words into categories as you go along. This teaches both idea generation and organization. You can do it across the curriculum simply to review content, so it’s never a waste of time. Additionally, you can do it across the curriculum and teach writing at the same time with Pattern Based Writing: Quick & Easy Essay. It’s the fastest, most effective way to teach clear and organized paragraph and multi-paragraph writing… Guaranteed!
Also, use Academic Vocabulary for Critical Thinking, Logical Arguments, and Effective Communication, aka Academic Vocabulary for Absolutely Everyone! You will teach the words that create logical, rational, and organized thinking and writing!
