Baby Step into Writing

Baby Step into Writing is 10 writing exercises for older elementary or middle school kids who read well, but are reluctant to write. They may feel unimaginative, or unfit to think up their own sentences even when they're given topics and outlines to help them organize their writing or give them ideas. This makes it simpler by asking for one or two words at a time in different writing settings. The exercises progress from every simple to a little more complex.

The exercises include:

1. Answering questions about a picture using one word and filling in the blanks of a short paragraph about the picture.
2. Using a Picture to fill in the blanks of a paragraph about the picture.
3. Writing your own ending to 10 different sentences on similar topics.
4. Writing your own beginning to 9 sentences on one very specific topic.
5. Finding rhyming words for certain words.
6. Writing one full sentence for three interesting pictures.
7. Filling in the rhyming words in a poem.
8. Writing every other line in a poem.
9. Writing 3 Haikus to 3 different pictures, sample haikus included.
10. Reading a Passage from Foundation Trilogy

Prologue

By Issac Asimov
Bantam Books, Copyright 1982

And then filling in the blanks of a fictional paragraph based on the reading passage.