Fun End of the Year Writing Activity

Here’s a fun end of the year writing activity I came up with. It’s not a time filler or busy work. It’s a way to change things up and continue writing and learning as you near the end of the semester. You can adapt it for any age and skill level.

This activity is appropriate to do if:

Your student has finished their curriculum and could benefit from more writing practice.
Your student needs a change of pace to stay focused.
You want to do a fun end of the year writing review.
You want to have your child try a few new types of writing, perhaps as a preview for next year.

Setting It Up

This is best designed as a collaborative effort between you and your child. The two of you will generate slips of paper with labels on them. Those with writing topics go in one bowl while those with types of writing go in another. Start with three or four in each bowl.

Writing Topics

Let your child determine the topics with some general guidelines from you. Here’s a sampling of how you might guide them:

A location (anywhere in the world)
A job
Something you eat
Something you can buy (not food if you’ve used that category already)
An animal

Writing Genres

The types of writing will be chosen primarily by you, with some input from your child. Look back at what you’ve covered this year. Or maybe what you’ve missed, but would like to briefly explore. Some examples are:

Creative (short story, poem, etc.)
Sales pitch
Informative
Job Application letter/email
Informal letter/email

For a very young child, your slips of paper might be more along the lines of:

Adjectives
Hyperbole
Alliteration
Dictation – they tell the story and you write it.
Shared story writing – they write one line, you write the next.

Making It Work

On day one, your child picks a slip of paper from each bowl. They may pick two slips of paper that ‘match’ – e.g. a job and a job application letter. Or, they might not. Either way, it works.

Say your child picks ‘waffle’. You can see how this topic could lend itself to a poem about awful waffles, a sales pitch for Wonderful Waffles, an informative piece about the history of waffles, an email inquiring about a waffle maker job, or a letter to a friend about a true or fictional waffle experience.

A younger child might come up with a list of adjectives to describe waffles (crispy, bumpy, sticky), alliteration (warm, wonderful, wacky), or hyperbole (so good I ate a stack taller than me). For the child who struggles with the physical act of writing, you can take the pressure off with dictation or shared writing as described above.

Goals

Be clear about what you want to accomplish with this fun end of the year writing activity. Chances are, your child will never need to apply for a waffle maker job. But they will need to know the appropriate format for an application letter. Allow some creativity and fun while asking them to compose within the framework of business correspondence. And if the writing format isn’t something they’ve covered (like a sales pitch or hyperbole) keep your expectations low with a goal of ‘exposure’ and not mastery.

I like to do this as a three or four day mini unit. If you want to continue after that, you can generate a new set of papers. Or, you can save this activity and do it again another time.

Enjoy!