Super Books for the Writing Station

I have just about finished setting up my Writing Station in my classroom and hope to post pictures soon. I wanted to share some of the books I place in the Station to help jumpstart the kids' writing.

The kids LOVE any of the I Spy books. They can write a story or description of any of the items in the awesome pictures. (I also use the books to teach main idea and details). These pics unlock even the toughest writer's block! So many bloggers are using pirates in their classrooms this year, that I wanted to include Can You See What I See? Treasure Ship. You'll get lots of pirate stories if you use this as a prompt.

Share Graeme Base's Animalia at the writing center to show your students how to use colorful words in their writing. Younger students can use the sentences as models for writing alliterative sentences for the beginning sound they are studying. The sentences are also great to use for picking out parts of speech.

Any of Barbara Lehman's picture books inspire even the most reluctant students to write. Students can write about the stories told in pictures in The Red Book, Rainstorm, and Museum Trip or can pick just one of the illustrations to describe. (Great for making predictions and inferences!)

istvan banyai's wordless picture books could inspire a year's worth of writing! Show the students Zoom, Re-Zoom, and The Other Side and step back and watch inspiration hit!

 A Circle of Friends, by Giora Carmi,  just begs the children to add words to the beautiful artwork. Friends are an important topic of choice, so be sure to include this one.

You own't be able to put Ooops, by Arthur Geisert, down long enough to leave it in the Writing Station! This book is great to guide students in an ongoing story or chapter book. Does the house fall? (Another predictions/inferences favorite.)

The simple text of The OK Book, by Amy Krovise Rosenthal, is a wonderful model for students to follow to write OK books about themselves. Once they have done that, use the format to write OK sentences about the topics you are studying in Science and Social Studies.

The pictures in Black and White, by David Macaulay, tell two different stories. Let students pick one story line to follow.

And last, but not least, go right now and get Meanwhile, by Jason Shiga, if you do not already own a copy. You might want to go ahead and get two while you are ordering, because your kids are going to looooove this book. You choose your own ending to each page of the book. The story lines are practically infinite!

Happy Writing!