Are you looking for persuasive writing apps, tools, and resources that you can use with your students? If so, we have you covered. Check out our list below. Let us know if there are any that we missed.
Virtual Writing Tutor – This website is a free grammar and essay checker that also proofreads your work. Simply copy and paste your writing into the text box and click a button. Virtual Writing Tutor can also provide word counts, calculate average sentence length, and assess word choice. The website does not automatically correct errors. Instead, students must review a list of suggested errors and make the corrections themselves. This forces students to think about the errors they are making, and over time, can improve their writing. The Virtual Writing Tutor also offers an error correction game for students to practice finding and correcting common English language errors and has a portal for teachers to set up pen pal exchanges.
Writing Prompts – Writing Prompts uses current events, random words, scenes, sketches, genres, and text to provide hundreds of writing prompts for whole class or individual student use. Simply swipe through the available prompts until one strikes your fancy or save favorite prompts in a favorites folder for easy access later. With additional packs of prompts available for purchase, there are millions of prompt possibilities so students will never run out of things to write about.
Writing Challenge – Turn freewriting into a game with the Writing Challenge app. Helpful for students that struggle to free write or waste valuable literacy time trying to think of a topic, the Writing Challenge offers a set of prompts and allows the student to select the one they want. Then, every minute (or longer if the app settings are changed), it offers additional prompts to further the student’s writing, such as adding new characters, words, places, or actions. The best way to improve writing is to practice, and for students that struggle to practice independently, the Writing Challenge can decrease writing anxiety and help deal with the fear of the “blank page.”
Grammarly– Grammarly is your personal grammar coach and an automated proofreader that helps students get better in the proper use of grammar and gain confidence in their writing ability. Grammarly helps correct about 10 times more mistakes than common word processors, and it corrects more than 150 types of grammatical errors and does a plagiarism check.
No Red Ink– This platform uses student self-assessments to construct sentences that pretest, practice, and evaluate students’ grammatical prowess and acquired learning. The app helps build stronger writers through interest-based curriculums, adaptive exercises, and actionable data. With the authentic assessment feature, students can rephrase sentences, modify and mark up texts, organize ideas into outlines, and manipulate multi-paragraph documents. The unlimited, adaptive practice feature personalizes instructions to meet each user’s needs and includes support for learners when they get confused. To make learning fun and interesting, lesson content is generated from topics that interest the user, such as popular celebrities, friends, and hobbies.
Penzu Classroom– This is a platform that helps young writers and teachers in their job. Penzu classroom covers all classes of writers, no matter what type of writing they do. Whether it helps with your diary or journal, keeping track of a diet, or a pregnancy journal, Penzu has something for you. It has all the resources you need to preserve your ideas and develop rather than wasting valuable time writing it. You can also become one of 2 million happy users of this platform from around the globe.
Quill– Quill is a writing tutorial app for teachers designed to help students become better writers. Quill is a nonprofit organization, and its goal is to provide tools such as Quill to help make students better writers. Quill uses web applications to create engaging content for students that helps them learn grammar, writing skills, and vocabulary. Using the teacher dashboard, you can monitor students’ progress according to the Common Core Standards; this feature also makes grading more intuitive and meaningful.
