Writing Activities in the Seventh Grade

Encourage children to write their thoughts and ideas.

In seventh grade, students are reaching out to express themselves, and writing is one way they can do that. While they now have the vocabulary and the basic writing skills to get their point across, they need practice in order to make their ideas flow smoothly and clearly. They also need a thorough understanding of the structure of their writing and how it affects other people. Seventh-grade writing activities encourage students to improve their skills.

Who Am I?

Ask your students to choose a character from a movie or a book. Then ask them to write a first-person description of that person, speaking as if they were that character. Remind them to use "I" and "my" rather than "he" or "she." This encourages your students to think about the words that they use and about how descriptive their writing needs to be. After they have finished their description, ask them to read it to the class. Then the other students take turns guessing who the person is writing about.

Diary

Ask your students to choose a character from a film or a novel that they enjoy. Then ask them to write five journal entries for that person. They may choose to write five journal entries that describe that person's day-to-day life, or to describe the events happening in the book. Encourage your students to write in a way that is similar to the way that their character talks.

Personification

Personification is the process of giving human traits to non-human things. Ask each student to think about anything that is not a person, whether it is an animal they know, an object in their house or an object in another place. Then ask them to describe what that thing would be like if it were human. What would their physical appearance be, and how would they interact with the world around them? What kind of job would they have and what kind of person would they be? This asks the students to engage their creativity.

Persuasive Letters

Ask the students to pick an issue that they feel strongly about, whether it is a political issue, one relating to their school or one relating to their family life. Then ask them to think about someone who has power over the issue or who could change it. Then have the students write a letter to that person, outlining the issue as clearly as they can and then suggesting a fix. This activity shows them how to write a letter and how to clearly present their point of view.

References

• Teacher Vision: Who Am I?
• Time 4 Learning; 7th Grade Language Arts