7 Great Writing Projects for Third Grade Students

According to Literacy Trust, only 22% of students aged 8-11 write for pleasure outside of school. Therefore, teachers must encourage students to find joy in the written word. During the third grade, students can string sentences together and begin to write in different styles including humor. However, they tend to get bored quickly and see writing as “just another homework task”. Fortunately, teachers can use a range of exciting activities to help nurture passionate and enthusiastic writers – we discuss seven of these below.

Storyboarding

Not all students learn by writing stories in the traditional sense – perhaps because they struggle with writing. Therefore, to help more visual learners, you can have your class create storyboards. This activity will help your students plan a story and will promote imagination. As a bonus, your class will improve their drawing skills. 

Although storyboards are a fantastic creative writing tool, some of your classes may struggle to generate ideas. Therefore, you can easily download and print effective writing prompts from Studentreasures.com. As well as fantastic prompt sheets, you will find entire collaborative writing projects, which result in a fabulous, published book at the end. 

How-To-Guides

How-to-guides don’t sound like fun, but that depends on the way you swing the activity. For example, if you dish out topics to your students, they’re likely to get bored because they’re not interested. However, if you let students pick from their skillsets, they’re much more likely to engage with the activity. You may have students writing about Minecraft, musical instruments, baking, and anything else they understand. Once your students have their topic, you can guide them towards a suitable guide title. 

Comic Strips

You may feel like comic strips aren’t a great fit for writing, but that’s where you’re wrong. Creative students will enjoy designing comics, and the dialogue will help your students improve speech writing. If you introduce a comic project to your students, we guaranteed they’ll be interested, especially given the popularity of heroes in today’s culture. 

Idea Journals

Inspiration can hit us at any time of day, and it’s handy to have somewhere to scribble ideas down. Therefore, you can have your class make idea journals – this part can be as creative as you like, so get the glitter out of the cupboard and have some fun. Once your students have decorated their journals, encourage them to write down ideas whenever they strike. 

Before sending your class away with their journals, make sure you demonstrate the task to show them how to make the most of their journal. Further, you should remind them to respect teachers, and not to drag them out during other lessons. 

Finish the Story

‘Finish the story’ is a great game to play with your class split up into small groups. To play this game, one person starts off a story – this could be you – and the children take turns to write the next sentence or paragraph. By the end of the game, the group will have written a whole story that can be read out to the class. There are no constraints on the story, it will be as wild and whacky as the minds in the group, but you will likely encourage plenty of laughter along the way. 

Song Lyric Writing

The chances are that your students enjoy music, even if their favorite songs do come from irritating TikTok trends. You can use this interest and have your class write their lyrics. You can frame this activity by having your students’ favorite artist ask to write them a song – this will help give your students direction. 

Monster Creating

English class doesn’t always have to be about serious writing, so put down the exercise books and put on your imagination caps. Have your class start this activity by drawing monsters – let their minds run wild with this. Once students finish their drawings, they’ve created the perfect visual aid, which can be used for the next step. 

Ask your students to go describe their monsters – you can provide a series of questions for this part including:

• What does your monster eat?
• What are your monster’s likes and dislikes?
• Where does your monster come from?
• Does your monster have any friends?

Without realizing they’re doing it, your children will have easily written over 100 words about their monster.

Takeaway

Many children don’t write for pleasure, which isn’t surprising given the rise of gaming and mindless streaming platforms. Fortunately, you can encourage your class to see past the “chore” of writing and find enjoyment.