Interactive Writing Tools

Read Write Think is probably the premiere site for interactive, student-friendly tools. Sponsored by the IRA (International Reading Association) and the NCTE (National Council for the Teachers of English), this site features dozens of Student Materials (my students call them writing machines) which prompt students to enter original ideas in order to accomplish a writing task. (Recently redesigned and organized, the site is now even simpler to navigate and use).

In addition, the site features hundreds of teacher-developed lessons (searchable by skill category and grade) which make use of these writing machines. At your fingertips, then, are your writing plans for the next few months!

If you're in the market for writing ideas, just browsing the machines and the lessons will inspire you. And if you're a newer teacher looking for ways to integrate technology into your language arts program, this is where to begin. Whereas most other sites mentioned below are designed to give the student inspiration, this one is designed to give the teacher inspiration (and then it delivers the tools to make the lesson happen).

In a recent post at my Teach with Picture Books blog, for example, I discussed Women in Science and recommended using the Book Cover Creator as an extension for the titles discussed there.

Can you tell I like this site? If you're a teacher, tutor, or parent looking for more inspiration, be sure to check out the Six Authors blog mentioned below.

Don't be fooled by the title of Writing Fun. Yes, it is fun, but it's anything but a frivolous site. Jenny Eather has created an informative, easy to navigate site which offers students the opportunity to see for themselves how graphic organizers can be helpful to the writing process. She offers multiple examples of how to use each type of organizer, shows where this type of writing is typically used in real-life situations, and then, best of all, provides online writing prompts to guide students, step by step, through the process.

And when I say step by step, I mean that. She literally walks students through the processes with clearly paced, easy to follow steps.

If parents are seeking writing help for their kids at home, this might be a good one to show them.

If you find that this site is too busy and you need a cleaner site to look at models of writing, then the Model Writing Bank mentioned below might be right for you.

This is a different kind of resource, aimed at the intermediate and high school crowd. Model Bank by textbook publisher Holt, Rinehart and Winston features dozens of clear, well organized models in a variety of genres and purposes including book reports, research papers, autobiography, cause and effect, personal narrative, and persuasive essay. As writing guru Ralph Fletcher says, one of the best ways to help good writers improve their craft is to expose them to good models and what he calls "micro-texts." What's great about these, however, is that each contains interactive margin notes, making this site a great resource for interactive whiteboards or individual student reference. You'll also find a detailed, printable Writer's Guide for each model, and models can be viewed and printed as pdfs for use offline.

At Holt Interactive Writing Models you'll find the same writing models, but in a slightly different format. Be sure to look at both sites to see which makes the most sense for your teaching purposes. Both this link and the one above include a printable Writer's Guide for each model, so be sure to keep an eye out for that; it's sometimes tricky to notice with everything else going on.

If you're a teacher looking for scored exemplars, check out these Houghton Mifflin Benchmark Papers. Great for popping onto a screen and discussing with the whole class.

Looking for how great authors use words in authentic writing? Check out Notable Sentences... For Imitation and Creation which features some terrific reader-submitted examples of writing which were found in novels that you and I would recognize.

The Brainstormer is a fun, interactive spinner that provides a random combination of conflicts, characters, and settings. Artist Andrew Bosley came up with the concept, and a friend provided the tech to make it work online. A clever little device that should eradicate that oft heard phrase: "I can't think of anything."

Bubblr is a simple publishing application that uses the Flickr API (Application Programming Interface) to allow students to search for, and use photos from, Flickr's huge public collection.

It simply works like this: a student decides she'd like to write and illustrate a poem about candy. She can search for the photo tag "candy," which brings up thousands of pictures from Flickr which have been permitted (by Flickr users) to be used in noncommercial ways. The student sees a few she likes, then simply drags them from the mini-gallery at the top of Bubblr's page onto a comic strip-type format in the center of the page. So her illustrations build the storyboard, one panel at a time.

Looking at what she has accomplished, the student realizes that one of her poem lines mentions jelly beans, yet she hasn't seen any photos of jelly beans yet. She therefore changes her tag search from "candy" to "jelly beans," and voila! Dozens of photos from which to choose. Once she's arranged the photos, she can then add text to each photo, using either a speech bubble, a thought bubble, or a text box. She publishes the strip, and the project is done! Simple and satisfying! The end product could be embedded into a wiki or a blog, or published comic book-style using a screen-capture app such as GreenShot. (Users wishing to use their personal photos for this would need to upload the photos to Flickr first).

Coming to the computer lab with handwritten poems at the ready, my students were able to produce at least one, and sometimes two, poems in a forty minute period (some students were much more discerning in their photo choices than others). Case in point: the poem titled "A Day in the Life of a Young New Yorker", created by a young student who dreams of Broadway fame, and is working hard to make those dreams a reality!

By the way, if you ever need to edit a published Bubblr strip, just find it in the archives, click on it to return it to full size, and then choose the "Recycle this Bubblr" link just below the picture strip. You can edit what you've created! One of my students recently discovered this!

Bookr is another simple publishing application that uses the Flickr API (Application Programming Interface) to allow students to search for, and use photos from, Flickr's huge public collection. It's from the same production company as Bubblr, and works in the same way.

Here, however, students are creating what looks more like a book, and its pages flip virtually. This would be perfect for a picture book format/picture book length publication, and students can certainly add more pages as they need them.

Some students felt that the text placement was a bit limiting, but most liked the idea of flippable pages. They felt that Bubblr was too much like a cartoon strip, and that serious subjects might not look too serious in that format.

One glitch here to note. While Bubblr had a searchable archive, it doesn't seem that Bookr does. In Bubblr students entered my last name, their class periods, and their personal student numbers, and this formed the author tag. That allowed them to quickly search for, and find, all works created that day in all three of my classes. But Bookr does not seem searchable in the same way. If you figure it out, please email me.

At Tikatok students can create a very sophisticated "book" online. What's so different about this site is that it provides not only story starter ideas (dinosaurs, heroes and villains), but also Story Sparks, which are basically sentence-long plots for your creation. As students work through their stories, they're given prompts along the way, and plenty of tools for customizing text, images, and pages. Finished projects can be saved in many ways, and even published as quality hard cover books. Highly recommended!

Note that because this site is so much more sophisticated than others, students will need more time to work on their projects. Be sure to view the introduction video together. I'd also suggest having stories already drafted, or scheduling the story drafting session as an entirely different lesson from the actual book creation. I also recommend having illustrations either scanned in and available as jpegs, or created using a program such as Sumopaint (below) and likewise saved as jpegs.

Story Bird is similar to Tikatok, but with one huge difference. The illustrations are provided. Professional illustrators have uploaded a number of gorgeous images in widely varying styles which will help writers become inspired. It seems that the site makes money when users choose to order hard cover prints of their creations, which in turn earns the illustrators some dough. It also serves as a nice showcase for illustrators who would want their work to be seen by larger audiences. I personally have no problem with either concept!

It's worth a look, because in the case of reluctant writers the images might provide some incentive to write. The finished results are quite impressive as well.

(Note that in several place on the site you'll see beta and sneak peek version. This is a hint to me that they might eventually change over to a pay site).

This site, sponsored by Scholastic, is somewhat simple in its functions when compared with others here, but is perfect if you're looking for a simple, sequential approach to a genre of writing. At Writing with Writers students are guided through the writing process by a famous children's author who writes in this genre (hence the site's name). The genres, hosted by such writers as Jack Prelutsky and Virginia Hamilton, include Biography, Descriptive, Folktale, Mystery, Myth, News, Poetry, Speech, and a Book Review. Once done, the site offers students the chance to upload their writing to Scholastic's showcase of writers.

These tasks are especially suited to independent computer use in a classroom where three to four work stations are available and teachers can't afford to constantly "check-in" with students who are on-line. It's also a great site for students to explore independently (for homework or extra credit) since it has so few elements to distract students.

Bubbl.us is an online mind mapping tool that allows students to either brainstorm or organize thoughts. My ugly yet simple attempt pictured here attempts to diagram the two ways to name triangles. Students, however, will be infinitely more creative with this application, and should be allowed a good portion of time just to play around with it.

I've learned that applications like this need no explanation; the students figure it all out intuitively, and then show me all the features that I missed. Can also be used as a creative poetry application, or on a white board as a whole-class organization activity.

Glogster is a cool publishing website that middle and high schoolers really enjoy. It allows text blocks, images, and even videos to be aggregated into a poster-type display. It's truly a mashup of ideas (to use a phrase from the young folk). This Edgar Allen Poe example illustrates a nice (but loud) combination of several elements.

Your best bet is to visit the site to see some examples. And if I were you, I'd use the Glogster Ed site which allows you to register a class. This will provide greater control over what your students see and do on the site. I'd also highly recommend that your students be unleashed on this site only when they have a clear objective in mind for a project, plus some preliminary work completed. Otherwise, too much time will be wasted "playing around."

For a super easy, illustrated guide to using Glogster, check out this document.

From ETTC here in New Jersey, the site Instant Poetry Forms allows students to enter prompted words and verses in order to form (you guessed it!) instant poetry. Some of the forms are purely creative and student-centered, while others allow students to enter researched information (such as data on an early explorer) to create nonfiction verse. An excellent way to encourage your poetry-phobic students (usually the boys!). Each prompt generator includes an example of a finished poem in that style, so students can get a good idea of how the finished poem might sound.

Once students have entered their responses in the prompts, the push of a button publishes the poem. This poem can then be copied and pasted into a word document and further edited, or combined with a free online illustration program such as Sumo Paint (see below).

Another interesting poetry site, although not nearly as diverse and robust, is Scholastic's Poetry Machine which walks students through four poems types: limerick, haiku, cinquain, and free verse.

Remember, April is National Poetry Month! If you, like me, want to teach poetry but were never really taught much about it yourself, this is a quick, painless way to get some great results!

From Australia, Lightning Bug is a cleverly designed treasure trove of writing inspirations, tips, and links for the upper elementary through high school crowd. Student users are provided with loads of jump starts such as ideas for plots, character names, and conflicts. Teachers can download related resources and worksheets for all topics. Not as automated and prescriptive as some of the other sites reviewed here, and with a bit of humor and irreverence which the older set will connect with. This is a site which was built with truly creative writers (who might need a nudge of focus or inspiration) in mind!

By the same creator comes The Digital Narrative, which serves as a blog and resource site for teachers interested in all aspects of digital storytelling. A great place to visit if you're seeking ideas or the resources needed to pull them off.

Adsense is Google's brilliant program that matches paid advertising to relevant web sites. I'm sure that Google ads appear somewhere on this very site! What's in it for us as teachers is a tool which Google developed called the Keyword Tool. The Keyword tool is for prospective ad placers to enter the name of their product or service to generate specific topic-related words which might focus their ads.

For example, a company selling products in the swimming market might simply enter the term "swimming." The site returns 190 more specific terms, including swimming pool, swimming technique, swimming history, water aerobics, and baby swimming lessons.

See where this is going? A student who has a general interest in a topic can use this tool to narrow down to a more specific focus. Horses. for example, returns 200 more specific ideas. Even better, a student with two interests (disabilities, swimming) can find a topic which includes both interests, as well as more specific search phrases which would help in researching the topics.

NOTE: The Keywords Tool will NOT filter out adult content. At all. Not an option. So this tool might best be used by the teacher in any instances where the returned results might be considered inappropriate for students.

Wordle is an online app for generating "word clouds" from any text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text (in other words, they make 'em bigger). The resulting images can be tweaked with varying colors, fonts, and layouts, and then used as you like.


I recently used Wordle to create a title slide for a session on summer camp staff training for the Salvation Army. I reconfigured that slide three times to illustrate some of the options the site permits.

After a couple false starts, I recommend you cluster your words in a Word document first so that you can easily spell check and save them. If you attempt to use the back button to add to or edit your word cluster, you'll sadly discover that the site did not save them. Some additional notes:

• The more times you repeat a word, the larger it will appear. So if the topic is Love, and you want that word to appear 5 times larger than the rest, then you will need to type it at least five times.


• Words you would like to stay linked must be connected with a tilde (that shift character that appears to the far left on the number row and looks like this ~). So "role model" would need to be "role~model." The tilde will disappear in the final project.


• Once your project appears, using the Randomize button lets you see many possibilities you may not have considered.


• If you want a certain word (say your largest) to use a specific color from the palette that you're using, go to the Color tab and choose Recolor. That will switch which words use each color, without changing the palette, font, shape, etc.


• To save, you must print as a PDF, or easier, click on Ctrl and PrtScrn. This saves the whole screen as a screen shot which can be pasted and cropped to be used elsewhere. (Click Ctrl, then Prt Scrn. Nothing will appear to have happened, but when you right click in a Word doc or Power Point slide, you'll be able to paste the entire screen shot there. Then use the Crop feature from your Picture tools to trim to size).

You do NOT have to send it to the gallery to get the screen shot. Realize that anything sent to the gallery is for public viewing forever. That's especially important to remember if you're using this application with students and prefer their work to remain private.

Possible uses?

• creating title slides and program covers
• brainstorming ideas
• designing "me" poems (based upon interests)
• summarizing thoughts from a collaborative session
• turning random ideas into art
• crafting "found poetry" using original words or text selections (for example, several paragraphs from a novel can be entered, insignificant words can be marked for deletion, and the remaining key words will be formed into a word cloud)

I recently used the app to create custom Valentines for my students. The site offers a gallery of completed projects which might to spark your imagination.

(One additional use, suggested by a colleague teaching in the higher grades, is for students to insert a chunk of their own writing. The resulting word cloud will reveal overused words in a stark, visual way).

While Sumo Paint is not a writing application, its artistic functions certainly complement any writing project which could benefit from illustration. Sumo Paint is free and requires no registration or download. It is as fully functional and impressive as Photoshop, yet much easier to use. What's best about it, however, is that it's free, and any student with an internet connection would be able to create impressive masterpieces in no time at all.

I found that the best approach with students is show them the online demo video, which introduces the major tools, functions, and palettes. Then allow students one full class period to experiment before tackling the specific objective of the lesson.

I thought the boys in my class would go crazy for this site (and they did!) but the girls loved it just as much! The plan: create a hero who would be the main character (and source of motivation) for a tale of action and adventure.

Hero Factory allows visitors to custom build a hero of their choice (male or female), making it truly their own through countless combinations of hair color, eyes, noses, outfits, accessories, color schemes, and more. (I created the bearded, bald, super-handsome hero shown here in less than two minutes).

My one concern is that the site does allow the hero to have a weapon (although they don't have to be holding one in the completed image). We agreed, however, that this weapon could only be used to fight off monsters, aliens, and imaginary creatures of all hideous and horrendous dimensions, and that no humans would be killed in our stories. Also, the final image features a nickname for the hero which is based upon the combined attributes chosen. We agreed that these names could be nicknames, but that we reserved the right to christen our own heroes.

After creating their original heroes, some students returned to the application to create allies and enemies as well. (The site is super-easy to navigate, requires no log-ins, and features no ads of any kind. I still can't figure out who even created the site, or for what purpose!) All students found the activity to be exciting, and their written results were just as creative and diverse as the super heroes themselves.

One of my Teaching with Picture Books posts called I Need a Hero features several hero-related picture suggestions as well as extension suggestions. Check it out for a ready-made lesson that will really excite your students!

Looking for a similar hero creator, or is this one down? Try Hero Machine.

Although I discuss digital storytelling in another blog, I think one site from that category deserves mention here. Photo Peach allows students to combine text and images in the simplest way possible, with stunning results. Click on the link to see an example, and be certain to try the spiral effect as well, which can be manipulated and resized using your mouse. Here's another example using personal rather than stock photos, with the addition of a song hosted at YouTube.

While this site can certainly be used in a linear fashion to tell a story from start to finish, it also seems ideally suited to poetry, in that the spiral effect in particular would allow the viewer to view lines and images in a random fashion.

I can also see some applications in Math and Science, where the ideas presented need not be read in a left to right fashion.

Six teachers have teamed up to bring us the Teaching Authors blog, a fabulous site full of Writing Workouts, teaching tips, author interviews, book reviews, and current events in the world of writing. One feature I love is "Ask the Teaching Authors," where readers submit their real-world problems dealing with teaching writing.

This site is meant for anyone teaching writing, from classroom teacher to homeschooling parent.

A Ning is an online community of like-minded individuals. I personally belong to sixteen different Nings (the English Companion Ning is pictured here, and is without a doubt the Ning in which I participate most often).

While I certainly encourage Nings for your own professional growth, we can also use a Ning to create a privately controlled and monitored site for social collaboration between students. When I say social collaboration, I mean that here students will have a place to dialogue about issues that arise in the classroom. Topics can be directly or indirectly related to your teaching, and students themselves can generate topic discussions. The same students who will write less than a sentence on a prompt will write twenty sentences to express an opinion about a topic in a conversation on a Ning. You'll also find that some students who rarely speak up during class discussions will actually have a lot to say here. Students can sign in easily, and you as owner of the Ning personally approve all members and have control over what is shared. Inappropriate comments are easily removed, and you'll also know who made those comments.

The best way to get a feel for what a Ning is about is to join one. I recommend the English Companion Ning, but you can also go to Ning.com to find another more closely related to your tastes.

And now, a big HOWEVER. Nings are awesome; however, your students cannot use a Ning if they're under 13 years of age. For that crowd, I would recommend you create a social networking experience with Edmodo. Edmodo is a closed, private social network you create where students can dialogue with you and each other, either in a gigantic conversation or a number of conversations (groups). If you've ever used Facebook or Twitter you'll see the similarities right away. You'll find lots of videos on YouTube which will help you understand how to get started at Edmodo and manage the student accounts.

I began using Edmodo with my students recently. Read about our results and get some some tips for implementing Edmodo.

MakeBeliefsComix is a terrific interactive site which will help to motivate even your most reluctant writers. For our graphic novels generation, what could possibly make more sense? I won't spend long selling you on the site, because I think you'll see for yourself that it's well designed, highly intuitive, and very open-ended.

If you'd rather not unleash such unbridled freedom upon your young writers, there's good news for you. MakeBeliefsComix has just launched a printables section, with teachers and parents in mind. These aren't coloring pages! We're talking prompts, people!

If you try any of these activities in your classroom, let me know how they work out!

Perhaps the simplest, shortest site featured here, The Newspaper Clip Generator allows students to create a fake newspaper article with a realistic look.

From that site you can also access The Movie Clapper. Either of these quick little projects could be incorporated into some of the bigger projects mentioned above, or offered as little extras for those students who are always finishing early.

For your writers who might have liked the Hero site (above) but crave a richer, more diverse environment for creation, the Myths and Legends Story Creator offers almost endless possibilities.

Here students can choose characters, objects, and settings, and they can even upload pictures created in photo or paint applications. Stories can be built by chapter, and students even have the option to record an audio narration over the story.

While some students will enjoy creating a whole story in this application, others may simply want to create an illustration which can be copied and pasted into an existing narrative.

In a recent post at my How to Teach a Novel site I describe Mark Geary's growing collection of book trailers (aka, book previews in video format). Most were made using Photo Story 3, a terrific, free program from MIcrosoft. In Geary's own words:

Photos are a great tool for teaching in the classroom, but with moving pictures, narration and music, they are even better!

Photo Story 3 is a free download from Microsoft that lets you easily create narrated "mini-movies" using photographs. It also has a built in music generator that allows you to put your story to music, copyright free! Think of Ken Burns's many wonderful documentaries. This program will allow anyone with a computer running Windows XP to do something similar.

The program gives students the ability to make their own 'Book Trailers' to help other students get interested in books they have read. Students can scan, draw or take pictures related to the book, import the pictures into Photo Story 3, arrange the pictures, add narration to the pictures, and choose the type of music used when the trailer plays. Photo Story 3 then generates a stand-alone movie based on all of the above.

Read the whole article, and Google the terms "Photo Story 3 Tutorials" for additional help in getting started. The learning curve is surprisingly easy, and the results are pretty cool!

IWrite is a pretty heavy-duty how-to writing site that features lots of mini-lessons and tutorials and is at first glance pretty busy and hard to use. This site is more for the teacher or tutor who might use specific sections in order to focus upon the writing process. This isn't a place to just "send the kids to" on their own, since they're likely to get bogged down. Take some time to explore and decide which individual features and functions could be used in your writing lessons.

Time for Kids Writing Help offers hints and helpful downloads (organizers, checklists, etc.) for specific types of writing tasks such as Persuasive Essays, How-To Reports, and News Articles. If you're asking students to write in one of these genres, or if you're assigning one of these for a book report, this site is a huge help!

PBWorks is a site for creating classroom-based wikis. Wikis are collaborative sites, and my students use them for storing their work electronically. For a really great example of how they're used, check out our Monsters Inked project, which was a collaborative effort between sixth and second graders.

What's great about this approach is that it totally changes a student's sense of author's purpose and audience. Rather than writing for the teacher alone, or for a grade, students are now writing for a world-wide audience. Students don't ask, "What's my grade?" when producing their writing in wikis.

There are other providers of wikis, but I find PBWorks' editing process to be quite smooth and intuitive.

Keith Schoch is a 6th grade Reading and Language Arts teacher in Bedminster, New Jersey. During his 20+ years in teaching he earned a Masters in Instruction and Curriculum, served on the New Jersey Department of Education ESPA Mathematics Item Review Committee, piloted tests for Educational Testing Service, assessed candidates for The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, and was named a Governor's Teacher of the Year.

In addition to his teaching responsibilities, Keith provides professional development for organizations such as the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA), the New Jersey Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development (NJASCD), the New York State Reading Association (NYSRA), and the New England League of Middle Schools (NELMS). He also shares his random thoughts on reading and writing with colleagues through three boring looking, yet really informative, blogs (see the top of the page). Boring loads faster.