Research has shown students to improve as readers and writers when both skills are taught in tandem. 

One way to connect reading and writing in your classroom is through an instructional strategy called Read STOP Write. (STOP stands for Summarize, Text structure, Organize, Plan.) This method helps students identify common text structures when reading and apply the structures to their writing.

With Thanksgiving approaching, students seem to be bouncing off the walls. Why not tap into that boundless energy with some fun writing activities?

The following activities work especially well for elementary and middle school students. You can adapt them for in-class writing or expand them into larger projects.

1. Origin Stories

"Family traditions reveal what you value enough to repeat, and—if done with love—build warm, happy associations."

—Daniel Willingham

Human beings have always been tool users. Fire let us wake little suns; arrowheads gave us talons like eagles; wolfskins sent us out across Ice Age Europe; and language—whether spoken, written, printed, or coded—fueled every innovation since.

Our brains require such tools. After all, those three-pound puddings of nerve and fat in our skulls haven’t changed much since we first fashioned arrowheads. In fact, in her new book, The Extended Mind, Annie Murphy Paul argues that we’re probably already using our brains at near-peak capacity.

Thinking harder is not the answer. Thinking outside the brain is. We need to grab hold of tools beyond our brains in order to think better.

Let’s start with the first thinking tool our ancestors learned to use: the space around us.

“Trust your hunches. They’re usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level.”

— Dr. Joyce Brothers

That pit in your stomach, that flutter of your heart, that frisson down your spine . . . sometimes your body knows things before your brain does.

More than odd sensations, these signals from our bodies can actually help us and our students to think.

In her new book The Extended Mind, Annie Murphy Paul explores the power of bodily intuition (what psychologists call interoception). She cites numerous studies that prove that the most successful Wall Street traders, the most unflappable Marines, and the most effective students think with their bodies as well as their minds.

Why? Because much of the input from our bodies is processed subconsciously and instantaneously, meaning we often intuitively know something before we consciously do. Tapping into this intuitive sense can make us wiser and more effective.

Paul outlines four techniques that we and our students can use to strengthen this brain-body connection: bodily meditation, affect labeling, intuition journaling, and reappraising.