Are you looking for some writing prompts that are related to an April theme?  You've come to the right place!
Narrative:
Imagine you are attending opening day of your favorite baseball team. Describe your experience at the field. http://bit.ly/2ovsdzc

On April 20, 1933, Amelia Earhart took First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt on a flight. Write a narrative from the point of view of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. How did she feel on her first flight? What did she talk to Amelia Earhart about during the flight? What are some things she saw while in flight? What was it like to take-off/land?

You’ve probably heard the saying, “It’s raining cats and dogs.” What would happen if it actually rained cats and dogs? Write a story about the day it rained cats and dogs.

Pretend you are a brand-new umbrella. Write all about your first day in the rain.

Imagine you could interview Mother Nature. Write five questions you would ask. Then choose one question and write what her answer might be.

Persuasive:
You are the Easter Bunny and decided to start eating ___ instead of carrots. Persuade your friend why it is a good idea. http://bit.ly/2oqYtU7

Humanity has decided to change planets and needs to sell Earth. You’ve been hired to sell it. How do you advertise it and what’s the price?

Earth Day is in the month of April. Explain why everyone should do his or her part to take care of our planet.

Write a letter to one of your classmates explaining why it’s important to recycle.

Opinion:
Should you crate your pet? Why or why not? http://bit.ly/2nJ2UwF

What do you think is the Earth’s most serious environmental problem is? What can children do to help?

If you were asked to invent a new flavor of jellybean, what would it be and why?

The best thing to do on a rainy day is…

Would you rather spend a spring day hiking in the woods or planting a garden? Why?

Descriptive:
Describe a thunderstorm to someone who has never experienced one. Give details about what you see, hear, and smell. Be sure to describe how you feel during the storm.

Visit a flower garden or view one in a book or online. Describe what you see.

Write about your ideal vacation. Where would you go? Why would you go there? Describe the scene, the weather, and the activities you would do during your vacation in detail.

April is Keep America Beautiful Month. Describe the most beautiful place that you have ever seen. What made it the most beautiful place? How do you get to this place?

Informative:
Read about Earth Day and write an informative essay including: What is it? How did it form? Why is April 22nd Earth Day? Who are the important people? http://bit.ly/2odKr9h

What is Patriot’s Day? When is it celebrated? What important events took place? Who are important people?

Many people do spring cleaning in April. What is spring cleaning and why do so many people spring clean?

All About D.E.A.R Day. What is D.E.A.R Day and why do we celebrate it?

How-to:
Write detailed instructions on how to fly a kite.

Write detailed directions on how to plant a spring garden.

Pretend that “Spring Fever” is a real illness. Make a list of symptoms that people with Spring Fever would have. Create a detailed treatment plan for a patient suffering from Spring Fever.

You are planning a spring picnic for your class or family. Plan a menu and write about what games and activities there will be.

Poetry:
What is National Honesty Day? Write an acrostic poem with words and/or phrases describing the event. http://bit.ly/2ne9yqR

Diamante poem- Rain to Sun http://bit.ly/2o81WLu

A springtime Ballad- Read a Ballad of Dreamland by William Shakespeare and create your own ballad. http://bit.ly/2o34av3

Spring Haiku- Use the nature is spring to form a Haiku

Bulletin Board:
Character Building - I care about the Earth so... http://bit.ly/2mNh7cB

I hope you were able to get some ideas for writing in April! If you would like to have a variety of instructions, templates, and rubrics, click the April bundle below!

Do you want your students writing more? These three ways will get your students writing!







Place a daily prompt on your white board using a projector or smart board. Students should use writing journals to write to the prompt. Supply engaging prompts with a variety of types of writing. This PAPERLESS strategy will free up your time to do administrative duties required when students first arrive in the classroom. For an effective way to begin the day with the students, have them share what they just wrote in their journals!








1. Provide graphic organizers, writing templates, and checklists.
When students have everything they need, they will follow through the writing steps. I like to provide these items together as one stapled packet. This gem is 6-Tier Organizer to separate the different types of writing. Click Here to find it on Amazon. I used return address labels to label each section.



3. At the beginning of the year, provide the materials for paragraph writing and towards the middle of the year, supply them for essay writing.


4. Provide prompts for your writing center. This can be done two ways.
A.  PROMPT CARDS



The prompt cards can be displayed using a Brochure holder. Click Here to find it on Amazon.
B.  ALREADY PRINTED PROMPTS ON WRITING TEMPLATES
Have prompts already listed on the writing templates and numbered with the type of writing in the top right-hand corner. This helps with easy organization. Make them for paragraph writing AND essay writing if you are in upper elementary.








In the writing center or another designated area, place the CARD HOLDER so that the prompts are not showing. If students finish early from an assignment, they can pick from the card holder and write in their journal.

I hope these ideas will help you and your students write more in the classroom!  

Grab this FREE NARRATIVE WRITING PROMPT with Templates!



I offer two different resources for writing prompts. With each resource, the prompts are listed for easy organization. Print the list and cross off any prompt that was already used.

1. The Grade Level prompts include 60 prompts (10 from each type of writing). They are directly written on the pages and each writing template (graphic organizer, rough draft, checklist, final copy, and rubric) is numbered with the type of writing in the upper corner. It aids in your organization. There are different checklists and rubrics for each type of writing. Cards are included.




2. 180 Prompt Cards and White Board Display: All 180 prompts are provided on cards and white board size. In addition, blank templates (graphic organizer, rough draft, checklist, final copy, rubric) are provided for the teacher or student to write the prompt in. There are different checklists and rubrics each type of writing.
Below are the products I found to use with my writing center:

 

At the end of the year, I had students make a video of their interactive writing notebooks.  Rachel's video was my favorite!  She was so thorough!





If you are looking for interactive writing notebooks for Grades 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, or 8, click here!

Do you want cute ideas for February to use in your literacy centers?  Although I have all of these items in my store, I am going to explain how to do each of them without a purchase!  If you would rather have the work done for you, there will be links below, but you are welcome to use these ideas in your classroom free of charge!

1.  Groundhog's Day-  Create Your Own Animal Legend Writing-  After talking to your class about groundhog's day, tell them they are now going to create their own legend about another animal!  Use a thinking graphic organizer similar to the one below to help them gather thoughts!


2.  Valentine's Persuasion Writing:  Give the students several prompts to choose from and let them start persuading!  Provide the friendly letter format to guide them in their writing!  Here are some ideas:
      a.  Convince your teacher or parent to choose you for special Valentine.
      b.  Persuade your teacher or parent to allow you to eat candy any time of the day.
      c.  Convince your friends to exercise or eat healthy for strong hearts.
      d.  Persuade your parents to open a candy store.

3.  Chocolate Opinion Writing:  Send them to this site to read an article about chocolate- Is Chocolate Healthy?  Then have your students decide whether or not it is a healthy choice and write an opinion paper.

4.  A Healthy Heart- Informative Writing:    Go the Heart Association's web page and have students read about what type of food and how much exercise children their age should be getting each day.   Have students create a newspaper article highlighting the information.

5.  Chocolate Web Quest:  Create some questions about the history of chocolate and how chocolate is made.  Give students links to answer the questions.  Here are some of the questions I used:
What are the main ingredients in chocolate?  What is a nib?  What happens while beans are roasted?  How many beans in a pod?  Name the 2 tribes that used chocolate as a drink.  Who first made chocolate into a solid form?  Who was the first European to come in contact with the cacao bean?  Who tried to keep chocolate to themselves?   How did chocolate help win the war?  Give them a treat afterwards!

6.  February Quatrain:  Use examples from the anchor chart to teach quatrains.  Then give students a February word bank and have them create quatrains with different rhyming patterns.  If you have rhyming dictionaries, place them in the center as well!



7.  Black History Biopoem:  This is a free item in my store!  There is a QR code to get to a Black History website.  Students choose someone to read about and then fill in the Biopoem template.  Super cute!  Grab it below for free!

8.  Duke Ellington:  This is the perfect time of year to learn about Duke Ellington.  You can read his picture book and read a biography on PBSKids.org/jazz and compare texts!  I like to play his music in the center too!

9.  Sweet Parts of Speech:  Make cards with Valentine's words.  Have students sort them into the different parts of speech and then write them out in their category.  Some examples:




10.  The Day I Was President- Narrative Writing:  Students write about a day they were president.  Start with walking into the Oval Office!  This great to have a craft to go along with it!



11.  Chocolate Grouping:  This is a freebie in my store!  See below.

12.  Cereal Box Biography- Book Report:   Students choose a person to read about.  I like them to read books for this one!  Then they decorate a cereal box.
Front:  Name and illustrate the cereal and person
Back:  Advertise their combination of cereal and person
Side:  Nutritional Facts:  Use bullets and list important dates and events in that person's life
Side:  Ingredients:   What are your similarities and differences to this person.  What would you change if you were in their shoes?
My students like to dress up as their person for this book report!

I hope you got some great ideas for February!  Here are some links if you are interested.

The writing activities are sold separately AND as a bundle.

Are your students struggling in writing?  This easy and painless way of teaching writing will have you doing the happy dance.  It is a teacher-friendly program designed to engage students and have them BEGGING to write!


After creating this program, I decided to test it out in my fourth grade classrooms.  I taught two classes of 24 students and was excited to see 98% of them score exemplary on our state writing test!  Now this program is available to you.  I will explain my theory for you to use in your classroom free of charge and if you don't want the hassle of creating your own lessons, then you can click the NO-PREP program with everything included below.

It is called BTS (Boost Test Scores) Writing Programs available for Grades 1-8 and covers Common Core Standards:

W.1, W.1.a, W.1.b, W.1.c, W.1.d
W.2, W.2.a, W.2.b, W.2.c, W.2.d
W.3, W.3.a, W.3.b, W.3.c, W.3.d, W.3.e
W.4, W.5, W.6, W.7, W.8, W.9, W.10
L.1, L.1.a, L.1.b, L.1.c, L.1.d, L.1.e, L.1.f, L.1.g
L.2, L.2.a, L.2.b, L.2.c, L.2.d,
L.3, L.3.a

What is in the program?

1.  Step-by-step lesson plans for how to set up interactive notebooks, sentence writing, paragraph writing, narrative writing, opinion or argumentative writing, and informative writing.

2.  For each mini-lesson, there is a teaching poster or anchor chart, interactive student page, and examples of model writing.  Some lessons also include fun, motivational ideas, student practice pages, and assessments.

3.  Forms and Posters:  writing workshop rules, mentor text lists, writing process posters, tracking forms, checklists, goal forms, and notebook check forms.

4.  Student Resources:  Million Dollar Dictionary, spelling dictionary, student resource booklet, portfolio labels, and more.

5.  Homework/Classwork Prompts with day-by-day student directions and rubrics.

What does a year of this program look like?

First off, be ready to start with a positive attitude!  If your students see you excited, they will be curious and want to jump right in on the excitement!

Always start with a basic foundation of:

1.  Sentence Writing  (Subjects, Predicates, Fragments, Complete Sentences, Run-Ons, Compound Sentences) - Assess progress and have students record their scores on a tracking form.

2.  Paragraph Writing (Topic Sentences, Relevant Details, Clinchers, Hamburger Model) - Assess their progress and have students record their scores on a tracking form.


The rest of the lessons follow a 6-Step Writing Process:

3.  Writing Process  (Prewriting, Rough Draft, D.A.R.E. to Revise, C.U.P.S. to Edit, Peer Reflection, Final Copy)

What are D.A.R.E. and C.U.P.S.?
D.A.R.E. - Delete, Add, Rearrange, Exchange  
C.U.P.S. - Capitalization, Usage, Punctuation, Spelling

The following posters are free in my store.  There is a primary version too!
4.  Narrative Writing Mini-Lessons
It is important to teach all of the mini-lessons with the first writing prompt.  It will take several weeks to write this first essay, but it will be worth it in the end!  If your district is adamant about starting with Opinion Writing, that is ok!  This program is flexible.  Although I found it easier to start with Narrative Writing (then build in the opinion and informative elements afterwards), you can start with any type of writing.

Start by introducing the prompt.  Each day you will teach a mini-lesson.  Provide a poster or anchor chart for students to see that skill.  Share a mentor text and model each skill by writing a class essay.  Then students take what they learned and apply it to their own writing for the prompt.  Only allow students to work on that particular lesson for their story.  Many students want to hurry and finish, but don't let them move on!  I recommend staying in this order so there won't be confusion in later lessons.

a.   Narrative Elements-Hand out a checklist!
b.  Prewriting-Brainstorming
c.  Task, Audience, Purpose
d.  Graphic Organizers
e.  Introduction (Character, Setting, Plot)
f.  Body (Power of 3, Suspense, Climax)
g.  Character Traits-Developing Character
h.  Dialogue
i.   Conclusions
j.  Rough Draft
k.  D.A.R.E. to Revise
l.  Delete
m. Add (Transition Words)
n.  Add (Million Dollar Words)-can also use with exchange.
o.  Rearrange
p.  Exchange (Sentence Variety)
q.  Exchange (Jammin Conclusions)
r.  Exchange (Crafty Title)
s.  C.U.P.S.
t.  Capitalization
u.  Usage
v.  Punctuation
w.  Spelling
x.  Peer Reflection
y.   Final Copy

Examples of the interactive lessons:














For each mini-lesson:

1.  Students should add the notes to their writing notebooks using interactive pages.  If you are short for time, you can skip the interactive part of the lesson.  Although it can be timely, interactive notebooks have proven to be a motivational tool!

2.  Create a class story and MODEL each mini-lesson with the story.  Include student input!  Don't skip this step.  Modeling is a powerful tool in writing!  (Model lessons are provided for you in the program!)

3.  Students brainstorm ideas for their story using the mini-lesson and add the ideas to their notebooks.  Allow them to collaborate in groups.

4.  Students add these ideas to their graphic organizer and/or rough draft depending on the lesson.

5.  Share some student examples with the class.


Once finished with the first essay:

Have students take ownership of their learning by tracking their progress!   After you grade their writing with a 3-point, 4-point, or 5-point rubric of the individual mini-lessons, have students record it on a tracking form.  Then they should create a goal for the next assignment!

5.  Opinion or Argumentative Writing Mini-Lessons

Once you start the second essay, some of the mini-lessons won't take as long. They will be review or  a different spin will be added for the new type of writing.  For C.U.P.S., only go back and review the lessons that your students need more practice.

a.  Opinion or Argumentative Elements-Hand out a checklist!
b.  Prewriting-Brainstorming
c.  Task, Audience, Purpose
d.  Graphic Organizers
e.  Strengthen Opinions or Arguments
f.  Introduction
g.  Body (Power of 3, facts and details)
h.  Conclusions
i.  Rough Draft
j.  D.A.R.E. to Revise
k.  Delete
l.  Add (Transition Words)
m. Add (Supporting Details)
n.  Rearrange
o.  Exchange (Sentence Variety)
p.  Exchange (Jammin Conclusions)
q.  Exchange (Crafty Title)
r.   C.U.P.S. (Capitalization, Usage, Punctuation, Spelling)
s.  Peer Reflection-make sure the peer looks at the goals set for this writing!
t.   Final Copy

Have students review their goals and track their progress!  Then create a new goal for the next writing piece!

6.  Informative Writing Mini Lessons

a.   Informative Elements-Hand out a checklist!
b.  Prewriting-Brainstorming
c.  Task, Audience, Purpose
d.  Graphic Organizers
e.  Plagiarism
f.  Taking Notes and Citing Sources
g.  Introduction
h.  Body (Power of 3, Vocabulary)
i.   Conclusions
j.  Rough Draft
k.  D.A.R.E. to Revise
l.  Delete
m.  Add (Transition Words)
n.  Add (Supporting Details)
o.  Rearrange
p.  Exchange (Sentence Variety)
q.  Exchange (Jammin Conclusions)
r.  Exchange (Crafty Title)
s.  C.U.P.S. (Capitalization, Usage, Punctuation, Spelling)
t.  Graphics/Headings/Captions
u.  Peer Reflection-make sure the peer looks at the goals set for this writing!
v.   Final Copy
w.  Glossary
x.  Sources
y.  Table of Contents

Have students review their goals and track their progress!

I hope this gives you a great idea on how to get your students motivated to write!  Be ready to see your students excited about writing and PASS THAT TEST with flying colors!

If interested in having all of the work done for you, find your grade level below.  I combined a 3-5 and 6-8 program for those who teach more than one grade level or didn't want Common Core Standards written on the slides!  Remember:  All of the student resources, posters, anchor charts, tracking forms, interactive pages, homework, modeling, practice pages, etc etc is included.   I also provide FUN AND MOTIVATIONAL activities with many of the lessons to keep your students excited.  You got this!