What has worked for me...

When it comes to teaching writing, I am far from polished.  I have implemented many different strategies along this road; some successful, some not so much.  My English co-teacher uses the Daily Grammar Practice program as bell work each day, and this is helping students demonstrate understanding of how sentences work.  As far as actually getting students to write, I have used the Storybird tool and the kids really enjoyed the freedom and creativity it offers.  I also purchased Study Island as a TCAP study tool, and this program has a writing prompt section that allows students to type his or her essays and submit them to the teacher for us to review, provide feedback, and return to them for revision.  The kids enjoyed doing this a little more than writing essays by hand, and hopefully we are moving towards taking the test on computers in the near future.  I always try to give students interesting topics, but unfortunately what I find fun does not equate to the same for all students. I arm my students with writing folders to make sure students are well equipped for the writing process.  The folders contain lists of categorized adjectives to add to writing as well as examples of figurative language. The folders take students from writing descriptive sentences, to paragraphs, and then to essays.  They keep all of their work in the folders and can track their own progress.   These have been helpful, but I continue to work on giving more frequent feedback.