#24: How to Use Writing Boxes for Elementary and Middle Schoolers (Part I of III)

Welcome to another three-part series on “10 Minute Grammar”!

This series is called “My 3 Big Writing Tools and Tricks,” and it will cover my three foundational writing techniques—how they are laid out, how to get a freebie of each type, and how to create them yourself:

(1) Writing Boxes—my signature sentence-dissecting and re-writing protocol made up of boxes in which students make a sentence their own (and eventually a paragraph their own). Extremely templated and easy to follow. (See images here: https://www.instagram.com/reel/CpTVpggIsnF/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=)

 

(2) How to Create and Write From a Sentence-by-Sentence (S-by-S) Outline—a third or more of the writing projects in all of my 100+ books contain given material/source for students to write from. The S-by-S outline approach teaches students how to write from sources in their own words. The “How to” lessons for these are in my “Tools and Tricks” books and each first semester book of “Meaningful Composition.” (As well as in March’s freebie!) Episode two of this series will teach you how to teach this!

 

(3) How to Complete the Checklist Challenge—the third foundational method in my books is that of the Checklist Challenge (CC). The “How to CC” lessons are in the same books as the “how to S-by-S” and will be the topic of the final episode in this series. Ninety-plus-percent of my projects have the CC—a checklist of editing/improvement tasks for students to use to improve their papers. I’ll teach you all about it—and get you a freebie!

 

So…10 MG 23–how to use writing boxes:

Beginning Writing Boxes

* Two or three paragraph familiar story (sooo many available—Christmas, Harriet Tubman, Frosty, Beauty & Beast, Dumbo, Alice in Wonderland, Jungle Book, Toys, Fairy Tales, Peter Pan, and more!)

* Each page has one sentence and boxes with tasks for student to complete to learn synonyms, sentence writing, etc. (see images)

Advanced Writing Boxes

* Start out the same as beginning ones

* Second half of each page of boxes teaches how to choose describes and make sentences more interesting.

* Both bring student’s new sentences together to create their own paragraph! Or paragraphs! So effective. Fun. Engaging. Interesting. You can do these with or without my free lesson or purchased lessons! Wanna see a video of my teaching this to teachers? It’s available here. How I Teach…Beginning Sentence and Paragraph Writing With Writing Boxes…(Episode #3) | See: https://languageartsladyblog.com/how-i-teach-episode-3/

Learn for a Month Find all my Tools and Tricks and Writing Boxes books here: https://languageartsladystore.com/product-category/writeforamonth/

https://languageartsladystore.com/product-category/writeforamonth/ Check out the first semester of all of my MC books here: https://languageartsladystore.com/product-category/writeforamonth/

https://languageartsladystore.com/product-category/meaningful-composition/ And don’t forget your freebies for this series! Sign up here: https://languageartsladyblog.com/

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