Resources
Culham, Ruth. 6 + 1 Traits of Writing: The Complete Guide for the Primary Grades. Teaching Resources. New York, NY: Scholastic, 2005.
This resource breaks down student writing into six traits: ideas, sentence fluency, organization, word choice, voice, and conventions. It gives student examples of what different stages of mastery look like and rubrics to use for grading student work.
Horner, Chris, and Vicki Ryf. Creative Teaching: English in the Early Years and Primary Classroom. Routledge, 2007.
This book has great insight on how teaching creative writing should look for young students.
Keniston, Ann. “Elementary Odes: Singing the Praises of the Ordinary World.” Teachers & Writers Magazine, January 18, 2007. https://teachersandwritersmagazine.org/volume-38-issue-2-winter-2006-2007/.
This article demonstrates how Pablo Neruda’s odes can be used in an elementary classroom and what the products look like.
Maillard, Kevin Noble, and Juana Martinez-Neal. Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story. First edition. New York: Roaring Brook Press, 2019.
This mentor text is about the Native American food fry bread.
Neruda, Pablo, Ferris Cook, and Kenneth Krabbenhoft. Odes to Common Things. 1st ed. Boston: Little, 1994.
This is a great collection of Neruda’s odes with beautiful drawings going along. The translation is side by side.
Oliver, Mary. A Poetry Handbook. 1. ed. A Harvest Original. San Diego: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1994.
A great breakdown of poetry for novices and examples of their uses in famous poems. Oliver also discusses the effect of using certain devices, which is very helpful.
Perabo, Susan. Writers in the Schools: A Guide to Teaching Creative Writing in the Classroom. University of Arkansas Press, 1998.
This is a great resource for developing exercises to practice literary devices.
Reynolds, Peter H. The Word Collector. First edition. New York, NY: Orchard Books, 2018.
A fun mentor text that many students are already familiar with. Could also be a great unit opener!
Ryan, Pam Muñoz, and Mark Astrella. Hello, Ocean! Watertown, MA: Charlesbridge, 2001.
Beautiful prose invoking all the senses.
Thorpe, Ryan. Teaching Creative Writing to Second Language Learners: A Guidebook. New York, NY: Routledge, 2022
This is a great resource for thinking about how creative writing might be different or challenging for students who speak more than one language or for whom English is not their native language, since so much of poetry depends on flexibility with language.
Williams, William Carlos, A. Walton Litz, and Christopher J MacGowan. The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams. New York: New Directions, 1986-1987
A collection of Williams’ poetry, including “The Red Wheelbarrow” and “This is Just to Say.”
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