Nowadays, more and more, parents and teachers doing everything they can to promote and inspire kids to write and read recreationally. For teachers that are searching for new activities to get students more involved in writing and reading in the home, here are a couple of suggestions. (You may even encourage pupils to deliver what they create in the home into college for sharing but not for analysis)
News writing and reading. Have students choose and read a newspaper article in the home, then compose a 1-page, short-short narrative depending on the story or some facet of the story of the paper article.
Ask students to write a journal about a particular occurrence and the way it affects them. They may write, by way of instance, regarding the weather and its impact on their ideas and feelings or about a meal along with its impact on them.
Original writing utilizing favorite characters. Have students take a favorite character from realistic fiction they are reading or have read -- Henry Huggins from the Beverly Cleary books, for example -- and write a fairy tale with the character as the protagonist. (you can check here my blog for more on business books for beginners)
Poetry composing. Suggest that students think of a favorite color. Have them write haiku or a different sort of brief, succinct, pointed poetry about their color.
(To provide the activity more of a fun feeling, you might select all the words from a specific category, like foods or animals.) Invite them to bring their word webs back to class for sharing.
Letter writing -- fictional. Have students write letters to themselves as if they were written by famous persons. Students then can bring their letters into class and take turns reading them aloud while other students attempt to guess which famous person "wrote" the letter.