Paper Choice Create your own bordered paper, soft corners

About this teaching resource

Paper Choice sheets are designed to guide and organise student writing and drawing for particular purposes during the writing process.

Students become enthusiastic when given varied, creative ways of responding on paper. Once introduced, add new paper choices to your paper stock to give your students ready access and the opportunity to choose paper tools that best suit their needs.

Simple but effective tools for publishing like a writer.

• Model how you might use the Paper Choice sheet to guide your writing or drawing
• Have students practice with you
• Have students practice independently
• Have students share how the Paper Choice sheet helped them as a writer
• As you introduce different Paper Choice sheets with different activities, gradually allow students more independence and flexibility in which Paper Choice sheets they use for any new activity
• Bring the whole class back to one particular Paper Choice sheet if you think a particular activity warrants it.
• Enable: Offer small group support for those writers/thinkers who require more guided practice in using a particular Paper Choice sheet
• Sometimes offer coloured paper
• Have students use different papers within their normal Bookmaking or Writer’s Notebook activities
• Make class books and make hard covers for the books

Paper Choices include: Different box shapes with varied numbers of lines underneath, word cards, game cards, illustration frames for Big Books, or lined paper. Sheets are either portrait or landscape in shape.