Develop writing skills by having your students write in a journal each day. There are several different types of journals that you can employ in the classroom. Students can keep personal journals, in which they write their feelings or ideas on personal matters. These journals are not meant to be shared with anyone else, they are simply meant to allow students to express their thoughts and feelings through writing. Another option is to have your students keep dialogue journals. These journals are kept between two people; either you and a student, or two students. An entry is written by one person, read by the other person and the other person writes a response. This type of journal highlights how writing can be used as a means of communication between two people.
Use response writing as a daily writing activity in fifth grade. Pose a question to your students, or supply them with an article from a newspaper or magazine and have them respond to the question or article through writing. After students have written their response, invite them to share with the class. Response writing teaches students that they can use writing as a means of expressing their ideas.
Poetry can be a useful daily writing activity in fifth grade. Poetry can be a difficult form of writing to grasp, as it is often hard to understand and compose. By providing your students with opportunities to write poetry each day, they develop greater comprehension of this type of writing and also learn that writing can be used to showcase ideas and emotions. Assign students different types of poems to write each day: haiku, cinquain, ode or limerick, or allow them to pick the types of poems they compose. Invite students to share their creations, assemble the poems in a class book or in a personal poem book for each student.
Encourage your students to write stories and have them work on their stories each day. Allow students to pick any topic to write about and have them use the writing process to compose their stories. Dedicate a portion of each day to working on these stories and once students have completed their final copies and published their work, have them start the process over again with a new story.