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Writing paper can include:

Highlighted words for students to trace over

Bold guidelines or boxes for students to maintain spacing and letter size & orientation

printed/cut out visuals for students to paste in the white box instead of drawing

Low-tech tools such as the Finger Spacer to provide tactile and visual cues

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Finger Spacer Writing Tools | 450+ Fun Products Under $5.00 | Finger Spacer Writing Tools from Therapy Shoppe Finger Spacer Writing Tools | Pencil Grips | Writing Slant Boards |Therapy Shoppe

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Finger Spacer Writing Tools - 450+ Fun Products Under $5.00 - Finger Spacer Writing Tools from Therapy Shoppe All the best occupational therapy handwriting help tools at great prices! Pencil grips, writing slant boards, fidgets, sensory diet tools, much more!

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Resources/Web Tools to Help Students with Writing

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Resources/Web Tools to Help Students with Writing

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Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

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As a fan of the digital writing workshop, I believe that when teaching writing teachers should focus primarily on the process and only secondarily on the product. Such a focus can help students develop the required know-how and skills applicable to different genres of writing. And because technology is almost indispensable in the writing process, I want to draw your attention to these web tools that you can use with your students in different writing stages. I have basically arranged them into the following categories: Digital storytelling tools, Comic strips tools, Mind mapping tools, story starters, Writing mechanics (grammar and style), Graphic organizers, and Tools for publishing students writing.

There is an infographic version of this post which you can access and download from this page.

I- Digital storytelling websites
1- Story Wars
Good for collaborative writing on digital storytelling projects.
2- Story Bird
Join a creative community of story tellers and get inspired to write your own stories.

3- Zimmer Twins
'The Zimmer Twins website invites kids to create and share their own animated stories.'

4- StoryWeaver
It offers a great story creator tool that allows students to write their own stories and share them with others.

II- Comic Strips tools
1- Storyboard That
Create and narrate your stories using beautiful visuals and storyboards.

2-Witty Comics
Provides you with a set of pre-designed characters, scenes and dialogue boxes to write your story. You need to log in to save your work.

3- Make Beliefs Comix
Create amazing comics using a wide variety of materials including characters, speech bubbles, props, backgrounds, objects and many more.

Create stunning comics using a drag and drop editor. They can choose from 'fully posable characters to dynamic panels, props, and speech bubbles, every aspect of a comic can be controlled in an intuitive click-n-drag motion.'

III- Mind mappings tools

A good tool for creating visually attractive concept maps. No software download required and maps you create can be saved as an image. It also supports different sharing and collaborative features.

It offers various features including: recording notes in different formats with text, images and drawings; link notes to each other; export your final work as PDF or JPEG; supports several languages and many more.

Lets you 'create unlimited mind maps for free, and store them in the cloud. Your mind maps are available everywhere, instantly, from any device.'

4- Lucidchart
You can use Lucidchart to design concept maps, flowcharts and different types of diagrams. It also support collaborative features and works across several devices.
IV- Story starters
1- Scholastic Story Starters
Choose from four story starter themes: adventure, fantasy, sci-fi, and scrambler.

2- Cube Creator
Offers you tools to create different story genres including a biography, autobiography, mystery story...etc

3- The Story Starter
Randomly generates tons of story starters to write a short story, novel, play, movie script...etc

4- BoomWriter
Offers practical tools to engage students creative writing.
V- Writing mechanics (Grammar and Style)
1- Grammarly
Helps you correct spelling mistakes and grammatical errors.

2- Hemingway
Helps you refine your style and improve language structure and lexicon.

It offers various tools to help students with their writing including Quill Grammar and Quill Proofreader.

'OWL, which belongs to Purdue University, has a huge online library that features a wide variety of materials covering different writing-related topics such as grammar and mechanics, professional writing, APA and MLA formatting guides, resume writing, research and citation tips, subject-specific writings and many more.'
VI- Websites to publish students writing
1- Book creator
An excellent educational platform to help students create, published share their writing creations.

2- Google Sites
Share your writing in a website you create and publish on the web

3- Google Docs
Another great option to publish one's writing in various formats including a web link.

4- Edubblogs
Share your writing in the form of blogposts.
VII- Graphic Organizers
1- Plot Diagram
'The Plot Diagram is an organizational tool focusing on a pyramid or triangular shape, which is used to map the events in a story. This mapping of plot structure allows readers and writers to visualize the key features of stories.'

'This interactive graphic organizer helps students develop an outline that includes an introductory statement, main ideas they want to discuss or describe, supporting details, and a conclusion that summarizes the main ideas.'

3- Compare and Contrast Map
'This interactive graphic organizer helps students develop an outline for one of three types of comparison essays: whole-to-whole, similarities-to-differences, or point-to-point.'

4- Venn Diagram
'This interactive tool allows students to create Venn diagrams that contain two or three overlapping circles. Students identify and record concepts that can be placed in one of the circles or in the overlapping areas, allowing them to organize their information logically.'

5- Persuasion Map
'The Persuasion Map is an interactive graphic organizer that enables students to map out their arguments for a persuasive essay or debate. Students begin by determining their goal or thesis. They then identify three reasons to support their argument, and three facts or examples to validate each reason.'

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20+ Web Tools to Help Students with Their Writing

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As a fan of the digital writing workshop, I believe that when teaching writing teachers should focus primarily on the process and only secondarily on the product. Such a focus can help students develop the required know-how and skills applicable to different genres of writing.

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Example of a conversation with a 6 year old about the 4 step writing process:

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Example of a conversation with a 6 year old about the 4 step writing process:

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"Let's look at your list.  What topic from your heart map do you want to write about?"
(child points to picture of a school)
"Great idea! You learn so much in school. What is your favorite thing to do at school?"
(child says/signs "books")
"What else could you write about?"
(child says/signs "books" again)
"You can write about books.  Let's think of something else you like to do at school, too. What about art? Do you like to paint? "
(child says/signs "paint")
"Good job! Let's make your list."

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Students can use Pixwriter for steps 2, 3, & 4

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Students can use Pixwriter for steps 2, 3, & 4

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This tutorial demonstrates how to compose simple sentences using Pixwriter. Students with ASD who have motor difficulties can use Pixwriter as a highly visual alternative to traditional paper/pencil.

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Pixwriter is a picture-assisted writing tool to help students with writing, using symbol support with highlighted text and speech.

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JavaScript seems to be disabled in your browser. For the best experience on our site, be sure to turn on Javascript in your browser.

A picture-assisted writing tool

Product Features:

Helps students to write independently with illustrated word banks

Provides symbol support with highlighted text and speech

Includes 10,500 pictures that automatically match to words

Documents may be saved, printed, or emailed

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PixWriter is a talking picture and word processor, ideal for beginning and struggling writers. It helps students write independently by combining symbol support with highlighted text and speech. Pictures bring meaning to words and voice output encourages

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Step 4: FUNNEL your topic and write about ONLY your TINY topic

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Step 4: FUNNEL your topic and write about ONLY your TINY topic

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"I am busy with my garden right now, so I will choose my garden as my TINY TOPIC and write a new story ONLY about my garden in Virginia."

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Step 3: Choose a TINY topic from your GIANT topic

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Step 3: Choose a TINY topic from your GIANT topic

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“I wrote about all different things!  All about Virginia fills up the top of my funnel because I have so much to say about it. Now I will find tiny topics about Virginia. I will highlight tiny topics and then create a NEW list."

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Write all about ONE of your giant topics.

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"Let's brainstorm by looking at our heart map and choose a giant topic that we want to write about."

*Heart Map may be filled with drawings, words, or visuals/images that students glued on from a choice board - depending on their skill levels.

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We will BEGIN to compose our story with MODELED writing.

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"Good writers have a lot of ideas about all kinds of topics. But good writers need to choose one tiny topic and write all about just that. When you pour something into a funnel, it comes out smaller. That's what we need to do with our writing - put our ideas into a funnel and find our tiny topic."

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Writing paper with checklist (download PDF)

Writing utensils (pencils/crayons/ accomodation tools )

PixWriter (alternate tech tool)

Visuals including:

Pictures

Funnel (real object)

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(Kindergarten)
Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to narrate a single event.