These worksheets focus on the process of writing - from the initial idea gathering to redrafting and the final product. The activities recognize that a sense of audience and a sense of purpose are crucial, and allow children to feel ownership of their stories and to understand that not all stories need to be published. The activities include: getting ideas; making notes; making a plot table; planning the beginning, middle and end; making up characters; using a dictionary and thesaurus; using speech marks; different kinds of story.

Making books provides students with motivation and a purpose for writing. The worksheets in this book encourage students to compose, create, publish and respond to print. The technological side of book production involves problem solving and engages children in gathering information, prioritizing, negotiating, decision-making and evaluating. The activities include: selecting an idea for a book; choosing a good title; creating an index; choosing and designing illustrations; producing preliminary pages; different types of books, e.g. pop-ups, books with windows, concertinas, pocket books, big books and diaries.

These open-ended sheets provide models for different forms of poetry, from acrostic and haiku to rondelet. All the models included have an in-built success factor because their simple, but clever structures invite the children to mirror them. Once sutdents have mastered the forms, they will be able to apply them to any topic ideas, including those given elsewhere in this book. The activities include: finding a beginning; using words to paint a picture; making up similes; rhyming; writing limericks, haikus, acrostic poems, riddles, cinquains, rondelets, poems that repeat a line, and poems that go on and on...

How to be Brilliant at Grammar helps children to talk about and understand language, and as a result to develop their own language skills. The activities and games include: recognizing the parts of speech such as nouns, plurals, adjectives, verbs, adverbs and prepositions; making sentences and clauses; alphabetization and ordering; using punctuation.