When it comes to teaching writing, it helps to start small. A supplementary guide to A Writer's Guide to Powerful Paragraphs provides suggested activities to help writers craft a variety of paragraphs. Each assignment covers a...

Track instances of foreshadowing in any text with a straightforward graphic organizer. In one column, learners note down the events that happened, and in the other they list the clues that indicated that those events would happen. Some...

Practice descriptive writing with a prompt that includes a photograph. Writers craft the whole story of the single second caught in a photo using the provided questions to prompt their imaginations. 

Young writers craft the story of a special summer day, detailing the event and why the day was so memorable.

Looking for a fresh approach to an end-of-unit project for The Odyssey? Check out a resource that has class members write their own hero's journey short story and then craft an illustration that depicts their tale. Apollonio di...

Organization is key in essay writing. The two organizational charts included in this resource model the block approach and the point-by-point approach to organizing a compare and contrast style essay. After examining the...

Betty Botter and Theophilus Thistle provide models for willy writers to wrestle words into tricky tongue twisters. 

Gathering information about a person is the easy part. Crafting an interesting biography is another thing altogether. The value in this information-collecting instructional activity is that writers are asked to move beyond the usual...

You never get a second chance to make a first impression. According to the 11th handout in the 24-part Writing the Paper series, that's why writing a strong introduction is so important. The handout offers strategies for crafting...

Here's a new take on a new year. After watching and discussing the video of Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman performing her "New Day's Lyric," young poets craft poems that reflect their feelings about the past year and their resolutions...

After Amy sneezed all over the tuna salad. So what happened? That is the question readers ask when faced with a subordinate clause unattached to a main clause. And this information sheet shows writers how to combine subordinate clauses...

Asking kids to craft their own stories? Get them starting with a character planning sheet that asks them to identify the character's likes and dislikes, his or her strengths and fears, a goal the character wants to achieve, and...

Imagine four pages of writing prompts. Although designed specifically for eighth graders, the topics could be used for upper-elementary and high school writers as well.

This, the fourth in a series of ten poetry writing activities, asks young poets to craft couplets.

As an assessment of their skill in crafting a compare and contrast essay, class members read and compare the portrayals of nature in excerpts from naturalist John Muir's My First Summer in the Sierra and from poet Emily Dickinson's...

Beyonce's "Halo" and Bruno Mars' "Grenade" provide eighth graders with an opportunity to consider how a writer's choice of words can create a very different tone even when the subject is the same. After a close reading of both lyrics,...

Read the descriptive paragraph (included) with your middle schoolers, and have them study the stylistic elements included. They'll look for vivid verbs, alliteration, assonance, similes, and personification. Before writers craft their...

It will cost you little to ask class members to engage in a free writing exercise that helps even reluctant writers craft a poem.

Nothing's better than a really funny poem! Help young writers craft their funny poems with a lesson on one of the most challenging parts of writing: picking what to write about.

Three free-response prompts provide scholars an opportunity to practice for the AP® English Literature Composition exam. Using released prompts from the 2010 free-response section, writers craft an essay about the experiences of a...

Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery" provides middle schoolers with an opportunity to hone their close reading and literary analysis skills. After annotating their copy of the story, writer's craft an essay in which they analyze...

Calliope calls kids to craft clever creations in this, the second in a series of ten poetry sessions.

Learning to read and write in response to a prompt is an essential skill. Users of this interactive learn how to analyze a writing prompt to determine the many facets that must be addressed, how to plan and structure a response, and how...

Set your class up for success with writing descriptive settings with these two graphic organizers. On the first page, writers note specifc details about their chosen setting and comment on how each character views the setting. The second...