University of North Carolina
Style
Just like you choose your clothes to ensure they fit the occasion, you should choose your words deliberately while writing. Style, the main topic of one handout in a series on writing skills, involves choosing words carefully and paying...
EngageNY
End of Unit Assessment, Part 1: Best First Draft of an Informational Essay
This is just the beginning. Learners take the first step toward their end-of-unit assessments of Unbroken. They use their tools and knowledge gained from the unit to create first drafts of their informational essays. Writers then respond...
K20 LEARN
Who Am I? Creating And Editing Descriptive Writing
With descriptive writing, the pleasure is in the details. Young writers learn how to add sensory details to a paragraph about themselves. They read a short paragraph and identify the sensory details used. After revising their draft...
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Writing Workshop: Writing a Compare-Contrast Essay
Crafting a compare-contrast essay can prove to be a challenge even for experienced writers. Eradicate the mystery with a PowerPoint that details the rationale for and the structure of this form of expository writing. The 20-slide...
Curated OER
Review with Creative Writing
Connect a wide range of literature concepts where writers demonstrate mastery through creative writing.
Curated OER
Found Poetry Finds Popularity
Writers use non-fiction pieces to craft found poems across all domains for a New York Times writing contest.
Clever Student Training Company
Eliminating Weak Essay Material
A strong essay eliminates weak or unnecessary material. Determining what information contributes to an essay and what information should be deleted is a skill readers and writers of informational text must develop. Class members practice...
Residential College in the Arts and Humanities
Poetry Lesson Plans
Need some ideas for poetry lessons? Check out this packet loaded with suggestions for elementary, middle, and high school writers.
Curated OER
A Book About Me
How big is your foot? How long is your arm? How big is your mom’s hand? After learning how to measure body parts, young writers collect their observations into an illustrated book. Instructions for crafting a 3D Tim Foil Man are also...
Curated OER
Through the Eyes of the Big Bad Wolf
Imagine how the wolf would tell the tale of Little Red Riding Hood or The Three Little Pigs. Young writers re-imagine classic tales by adopting the point of view of another character in the story. After reading models like The True Story...
Association of Legal Writing Directors
Quotations
Illustrate the fine workings of how to punctuate the many situations where are quotations appear and are needed in this easy to understand PowerPoint presentation. It is designed for legal writers, so some the examples are for specific...
Curated OER
From Light to Dark and Back
Experiment with light and dark in a series of interactive activities that lead up to reading and writing poetry. Class members have the opportunity to observe their feelings while sitting in the light and dark and to play with shadow...
Curated OER
Guidance for Creating Writing Lessons for Dyslexic Students
How do you help a child with dyslexia succeed as a writer? Here is a resource for those who need guidance in creating writing lessons for their students with dyslexia. It discusses research-based strategies that can be used and...
University of North Carolina
Plagiarism
As many unfortunate journalists have learned, taking someone else's ideas and passing them off as your own is never a good idea. It's called plagiarism—and it's a big deal. Thankfully, a handout helps writers learn how to avoid...
Curated OER
Latin Culture Through Art and Literature
Eleventh graders participate in a lecture on the history of Latin Americans and the role of Latin-American women writers. As a class, they read a story together and identify what lessons the narrator gained throughout the story. In...
App State
Brainstorming
Get your young writers outside of the traditional essay writing mode with Free Write Friday. Free Write Friday encourages your class to use personal experiences or knowledge to write more creative pieces. Young writers could experiment...
Curated OER
Jeffrey and Sloth: Six Traits of Writing
Use drawings as inspiration. Have learners doodle for 10 minutes before beginning the lesson. Then, have them use their doodles to inspire a story. Several writing activities are included here to play with writing. One of my favorites...
University of North Carolina
Paragraph Development
There's no set length for a good paragraph, but the short block of text should contain key components. A handout on paragraphs, the 12th in a series of 24, outlines a five-step process for paragraph development. Additionally, the handout...
Curated OER
Reading Response Journal Lit Logs
Here is a worksheet presenting many ways to create topics and start sentences. The writing prompts are best used for young writers who are creating reading response journals or literature logs. Sometimes, all a writer needs is a good...
Curated OER
Bulleted Lists: punctuating items in vertical lists
What is easier to read: a bulleted list or a block of text? Look at different examples with your class and then go over the style guidelines for vertical lists.
Curated OER
Enhancing Poetry with American Memories
Students explore poetry using American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project. They compose their own unque "found poetry" based on the stories found in the collection.
Curated OER
Printable Story Starter: The Get-Away
This fun, creative writing prompt invites young writers to continue the story of Boe and Tim, who discover a hot air balloon while escaping from their big sisters. The worksheet provides a space where learners can finish the middle and...
Curated OER
How to Integrate Quotations
Quotations add validity to an argument or an analysis, but how do you integrate them into your writing? Several examples are provided, and your emerging writers will surely benefit from looking at different ways to add quotations....
San José State University
Effective Argumentation: Premises and Conclusions
Augment argumentative skills with this handout and brief exercise. This resource outlines premises, conclusions, and joining words, and explains how these make up the foundation of logical arguments. After reading through this...