Back to School News is creative writing task that I’ve used during the first week of school for many years. Students love it!
As a teacher, you’ll love this back to school writing activity too. Why? Read on, teacher friend!
It’s such a fun way to get to know your new students! Through this writing activity, you’ll learn a bit about each students’ summer, home life, and feelings towards school. You’ll also be able to see how they treat creative writing assignments, drawing/artistic abilities, handwriting, creativity, and humor.
Also, it’s a pretty time-consuming task, but it’s meaningful and engaging. It will keep your new students busy while you greet your new students, work on those urgent first day tasks, or pull students one-on-one for assessments or conversations.
Once they finish, these back to school newspapers make a pretty stellar bulletin board display that students and staff alike will love looking through.
Lastly, you can use the completed newspapers intentionally to plan for writing instruction. We all have standards that state standard that says something about “using standard conventions of English” and “with the support of an adult, publish a writing piece.” This is a great assessment tool to get a baseline feel on your new students’ writing abilities. (Think: handwriting, grammar, conventions, sentence formation, progression, spelling, proofreading… The list goes on!)
Copy one of the pages as a work sample, if you need one! Most importantly, it’s also a fun way for our students to “publish” their writing by creating their own newspaper; They love it!
Wondering if it will work for you?
It’s up to you if you use just one page or all four! I personally like to use all four pages and have students glue them on a 9×18 piece of construction paper so that the end result looks like a real newspaper. However, you could also do one page front and back so that it ends up looking more like a newsletter or pamphlet. Your classroom, your decisions!
Back to School News is also available on Google Slides and Seesaw if you are paperless or teaching virtually.
