Creative Writing Worksheets from A Tasteful Cliché - for only $2.99 each

• Character and Setting Writing Prompts
  Creative writing prompts for your students (120 worksheets in all). These fun creative writing prompts involve a given character (from history, mythology, etc.) and a given setting. The student has to write a story about, or from the perspective of, the character in the given setting. An example: Write a story about a werewolf in a galaxy far, far away. Another example: Cinderella in a logging camp.

• Alien Observer Worksheets
  A fun creative writing exercise for your students. Creative writing prompts (100 in all) for your English students. They are tasked with describing an activity or object on Earth as if they were an alien scout sent to describe everything on Earth to their fellow aliens.

• Puppy Dog Tails Worksheets
  Give your students these fun writing exercises for a different kind of creative writing assignment. The students have to create a recipe for three occupations per worksheet (over 100 worksheets in all!), similar to the poem in which boys are made of "snips, snails, and puppy dog tails".

• Dull Product Advertisement Worksheets
  A creative writing and art assignment for your students. Students have to create an advertisement for an otherwise-dull household product like bow ties and door knobs. 100 prompts in all.

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Printable Writing Worksheets from GoPromo

Check out these fabulous printable worksheets that you can use to help teach your students to write from GoPromo.com

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Bind Your Own Books at Home

Posted by Brian McCabe, Brian@AVKO.org

Whether you are scrapbooking, self-publishing your child's best-selling work of fiction, doing arts and crafts, or creating a portfolio of writings, there are many reasons why you may want to bind your own book at home. AVKO recommends daily writing; creating a book that contains all of these writings, in chronological order, can easily show the progress that your student has made in writing over the course of a lifetime.

BindingBooksBeautifully.com has ready-to-go packages for you to use to make your own books at home.

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Grammar Untied -- A Featured Website

Posted by Hajira Khan, AVKO Volunteer

Grammaruntied.com, formerly known as Tongue Untied, is a great website! It covers a wide range of topics, and offers instructions related to basic grammar, sentence structure, and word choice, as well as rules for punctuation. It covers all the aspects of English language and is an excellent online guide.

This website was originally developed for students who want to take Journalism as a major at college level. However, it can be used by people of all ages whether young or old.

The website’s layout is simple but effective, making it appealing. The website has information you need in a design that is easy to read and understand. This information can easily be navigated by using the clear instructions present for the users. There are two menus on the home page of the website; one is on the left side of the page and the other on the top of the page. The left menu provides links to explanations in each of the major components of English grammar while the top menu offers links to quizzes, curriculum, and discussion. There are seven tabs on the top menu, each one directing the user to another page that contains more information.

For each concept covered, it starts with a brief description of the theory and provides excellent examples and interactive quizzes. For example, the page on adjectives tells you what adjectives are, followed by a practice exercise on adjectives, and an interactive quiz. By doing such quizzes, the users can find out how proficient they are in English language. A very interesting element present on the website is an image that reads “Grammar Warning Ahead”, by clicking on this image the user is directed to a new page with topics like “Top Ten Most Commonly Confused Words.”

There is a ten week curriculum on the website. Each week a topic is extensively covered, with its explanation, and its types followed by homework and example quizzes. If this curriculum is properly followed, it can produce meritorious results by the end of the tenth week.

The website is very impressive and is recommended to anyone teaching, learning or polishing their English. The content is exceptionally good, and everyone can benefit from the enormous amount of material on it.

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