Valhalla Free Union School District
End of the Year Writing Portfolio Project
Ask class members to reflect on their year-long writing experience by creating a portfolio of their work. Here's a resource that details what should be included in such a portfolio, and provides a rubric that can be used to assess the...
Lakeshorelearning
Read and Write about It
Reading informational text is a skill that transcends subjects and grade levels. Practice reading about different topics in various formats with a language arts lesson that includes opportunities for writing and research as well.
EngageNY
Revising Draft Letters to a Publisher about an Athlete’s Legacy: Using Critique and Feedback, Part II
Let's get opinionated. Scholars participate in a peer critique and revision process using a fun activity called a Four Corners strategy. After incorporating classmates' feedback, individuals share their final drafts of their opinion...
EngageNY
Revising Draft Letters to a Publisher about an Athlete’s Legacy: Critique and Feedback, Part I
Pick a corner, any corner! Pupils use the Four Corners strategy and Peer Critique protocol to assess one another's draft letters to a publisher about an athlete's legacy. Scholars then use peer feedback to revise their letters.
K12 Reader
A Native American Tribe
Culminate your unit on Native American tribes with a clear, concise writing prompt. It instructs young writers to complete a report about any Native American tribe, and to include information about the belief systems and traditions of...
San José State University
Revising for Clarity: Characters and Their Actions
This handout offers a three-step process for revising sentences for clarity: diagnose, analyze, revise. After reading an example sentence revision with a detailed explanation, learners complete three sample sentences using the three-step...
San José State University
Writing Concisely: Deleting or Replacing Unnecessary Information
Are you actually feeling really tired of reading wordy, redundant, long, lengthy sentences practically all the time over and over again? Introduce writers to this handout and exercise to teach to tighten up their prose! Provides two ways...
Curated OER
Telling Our Stories of Giving - Writing to Persuade
After identifying the parts of a persuasive piece of writing, young writers explore different prewriting activities for the persuasive essay. They have the option to write a news article, personal narrative, or persuasive essay to...
Curated OER
How to Research and Write an Essay
Research and write a 500-word essay. Pupils research a topic and write an essay based on their research. They use the given directions and examples to help them research, organize, format, and write their essay. There's a short chart...
Curated OER
Basic Guide to Writing an Essay
Introducing your class to essay writing? The gentle tone, concise explanations, and clear examples provided by a 17-slide presentation introduces young writers to the expository essay format. All that's missing is a complete essay with...
Tech Coach Corner
Narrative Writing
A comprehensive presentation on narrative writing, this should be shown to a class before the writing process begins. There are not activities listed, so pupils can take notes on the elements of narrative writing and figurative language....
Curated OER
Writing For Different Audiences
Evaluate the use of vocabulary in written paragraphs to make the determination of its appropriateness for a particular audience. As a class, seventh graders develop a fictional team and write three paragraphs to different audiences based...
Curated OER
Writing a Personal Narrative
What is the difference between a news story and a personal narrative? This plan has learners write a personal narrative using the topic of service projects in their community. Consider completing a cross-curricular extension by bringing...
Curated OER
Narrative Writing
Binoculars are used as a metaphor for good descriptive writing. Class members first view a small picture and then an enlarged view of the same image in which the details come into focus. Next, learners examine a paragraph lacking sensory...
EngageNY
Paragraph Writing Instruction
Writing a paragraph from details found directly in a text is the central focus of this thorough and explicit lesson plan. Using the stories Nasreen's Secret School and Rain School, third graders are lead step-by-step through the basics...
Curriculum
Expository Writing
The beauty of the way this expository writing resource is structured is that the units can be presented as a complete writing workshop or sequenced throughout a course of study
San Diego Unified School District
On-Demand Persuasive Writing Samples
Young writers complete a timed persuasive writing assignment in which they argue for a club they would like to see established at school, and are then provided with real student samples of responses.
Curated OER
Report Writing Exercise
There's specific language that is commonly used with each type of writing. With report writing, the writing is direct, clear and focused. Writers categorize 14 different phrases common to this style of writing and place them under the...
Curated OER
Writing: Mentor Text Lesson & Microteaching
Mentor texts are a great way to demonstrate how to write with purpose. Pupils will be reintroduced to two well-known books and then asked to think about them from the writer's point of view. They will see that the author had to use basic...
EngageNY
Writing Dialogue: Revising Historical Narrative Drafts to Add Dialogue
Young writers have written, revised, and peer-edited their historical fiction narratives by the 10th lesson plan in a language arts unit. Fourth graders finally combine their revision notes to create a second draft. The double-spaced...
EngageNY
Revising for Organization and Style: Bold Beginnings
Get young writers thinking about how to write a great beginning for their narratives. After examining examples of solid beginnings in literary text, young writers discuss the criteria for a compelling introduction. Then, independently,...
Curated OER
Improving Descriptive Writing: Painting an Original Picture
Descriptive writing is rich in sensory appeals and paints pictures in the minds of readers. Show young writers how to use an on-line thesaurus and a cliché website to create fresh, descriptive writing. The presentation ends with an...
EngageNY
Planning for Writing: Introduction and Conclusion of a Literary Argument Essay
After completing three body paragraphs of an argument essay about life's rules to live by from Bud, Not Buddy Christopher Paul Curtis, it's time to begin writing the introduction and conclusion. Independently, pupils draft the final two...
Scholastic
Writing An Acrostic
Invite learners to introduce themselves through poetry. After brainstorming and choosing details, pupils draft two acrostic poems using their names as the base. They then evaluate and revise their poems.