The Middle School Writing Practice series consists of two books: Writing Workbook for 5th & 6th Grades and Writing Workbook for 7th & 8th Grades. Both books are formatted similarly, with instructional material and writing prompts.
The instructional material briefly teaches about literary devices and sentence structure in both books, with additional instruction about the audience and the main idea in the book for grades seven and eight. Practice is included along with that instruction on fewer than 10 pages, but the 50 writing prompts that follow the instruction are where students have the most opportunities to practice and apply what they have learned. In fact, you can use instructional information as reference information or to supplement work on particular writing prompts if you don’t want to begin with it.
The writing prompts are designed to spark ideas, with at least three or four “Optional Guiding Thoughts and Questions” under each prompt. Students have two lined pages to respond to each prompt. “Try this!” in the upper right corner of some writing prompts challenges students to apply specific literary devices or other skills they studied in the instructional part of the book. For instance, the “Try this!” for Writing Prompts 29 and 39 in Writing Workbook for 5th & 6th Grades say, “Incorporate hyperbole to stress the uselessness of this superpower” and “Use at least three different sentence structures in your summary.”
Literary devices in the book for grades five and six are alliteration, hyperbole, imagery, metaphors, onomatopoeia, and similes. Four types of sentence structures are taught in that book: simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex, and students learn about both dependent and independent clauses. The book for grades seven and eight reviews the same literary devices, sentence structures, and clauses, and adds mood, tone, audience, and main idea.
The writing prompts are divided into five or six groups, both beginning with the first group of ten prompts asking students to write about “Your Life.” For instance, the first prompt in the book for grades five and six is, “Describe yourself.” Following the prompt are four “Optional Guiding Thoughts and Questions”:
- What do you look like?
- What are your best features and characteristics?
- How would you describe your personality?
- How are you similar and different from others your age?
Students might address one or more of these questions, and the instructions say that students should respond with a minimum of a five-sentence paragraph. The books provide two lined pages for writing in response to each prompt.
Other categories of prompts in the book for fifth and sixth grades are Favorites, Opinions, What would you do?, Summarization, and Creative Writing.
The book for grades seven and eight asks students to write a minimum of three paragraphs for each prompt, and the categories for prompts are Your life, Imagine If, Opinion, Inform and Explain, and Creative Writing. The prompts at this level are generally more challenging. This is especially evident in the few prompts that require research. For instance, Writing Prompt 40 in the book for grades five and six says, “Learn about and summarize a current event involving plants, animals, or the environment,” while the corresponding prompt for seventh and eighth grades says, “Learn about and summarize a new science discovery.” Another prompt in the upper-level book asks students to write their opinion about the use of animals in science experiments and for testing products and medicines.
Both books offer many opportunities for creative and personal writing, but some require research or knowledge, such as those mentioned in the previous paragraph. A few of them might require more guidance from a teacher for the research than is practical, and they can be skipped or modified. Prompts can also be used out of order.
These books are great for sparking ideas, helping students write well-crafted sentences, and encouraging them to practice various writing styles. However, they do not teach paragraph or essay structures, probably assuming that’s been taught elsewhere.
Summary
The Middle School Writing Practice books should be especially useful for reluctant writers and those who struggle to generate ideas, and the variety of writing prompts should stretch the skills of all students.
