Curated OER
Finding Your Story: Helping Students Begin Their Memoir
Students write their memoir. In this memoir activity, students study the differences between an autobiography and a memoir. Students construct an outline as the basis for their memoir.
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Ten Prompts for Student Writing
Build writing skills and creative thinking. Writers are given a variety of thought-provoking writing prompts to choose from. After they choose what they will write about they share their pieces with the class.
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"Golden" Years?
The Golden Years? Upper graders may think retirement is a long way off, but in life everything is just around the corner. They consider what it means to retire and the current trend of parents working for their Students. They research...
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Campaign Trailblazers
Explore the backgrounds, qualifications, and platforms of the presidential candidates for the 2000 election. Though the lesson is outdated, the activities within the informational text could be good practice for your young learners as...
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Dear Diary
Work on narrative writing with this lesson, in which middle schoolers analyze the characters from a selected piece of literature and write narrative diary pieces as the character. They work to understand the point of view of the...
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Lesson Plan 17: Novel, Take 2
It's all about using peer resources in this writing process lesson, which includes a fantastic novel revision worksheet packet. Learners have read a partner's story draft the night before, and groups have a "lightning round of praise"...
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Photographic Memories
Explore how photographs can represent a whole story to a viewer. Middle schoolers work on narrative writing techniques in this lesson, focusing on photographs from the New York Times to write first-person descriptive narratives....
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Rave Reviews
A fun lesson that utilizes toys and persuasion! After reading the article, which was written in 2005, pull some advertisements for toys currently being sold. These will be more relevant to your middle and high schoolers. What toy is a...
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Health Conscious?
What is your attitude on health and illness? By considering their own experiences, students will reflect on and discuss their attitudes toward health and illness while educating each other by researching illnesses in small groups,...
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Borrowing Narrative Skills from Mr. Fletcher: Using a "Prompts in Reverse" Technique to Inspire Your Writers
Help your class find their writing voices with this lesson which uses the work of Ralph Fletcher to guide a "Prompt in Reverse" activity. Using the chapter "First Pen" from Fletcher's Marshfield Dreams, learners decipher what they...
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Narrative Writing for Publication
Seventh graders create an original narrative story in a diary or journal format involving a fictional character with conflict, plot, resolution and falling action within the story line. They follow the steps of the writing process with...
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Are There Any Heroes Out There?
Learners explore political candidates' viewpoints on issues that contribute to the "common good." In this political candidates lesson, students read and view mixed media to identify political issues that contribute to a civil society....
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Publishing Written Reports
Seventh graders discuss the importance of presentation in report writing. They prepare and publish written reports on pre-selected topics. Students use various media, including covers and visual aids.
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Go for the Gold!
The options are vast with this Ancient Greece and Olympics research project! Using Scholastic online resources, historians have interactive and educational supports to guide them through researching and writing about the 2004 Olympics in...
Eye On Education
I Say Tomato, You Say To-Mah-To
Turn your junior high talkers into effective arguers. Introduce these budding lawyers to skills that show how to support a claim, decide what clear reason is, and how to use evidence to support an argument. Time is scheduled for class...
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Creating Bloggers
Blogs provide the motivation for this richly detailed writing lesson plan. After viewing blogs on various websites, class members pick topics, create a blog, and post an entry. Your bloggers then evaluate their work using evaluation...
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What Makes Our Community Special?
Explore websites, complete research, and use technological tools to create a final multimedia presentation on what makes a community special. Learners of all ages work with a partner to research an interesting aspect of their community,...
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Same Theme, Different Story Using Fox by Margaret Wild
Middle schoolers work with themes in this lesson, which is based on Fox by Margaret Wild. Because the book has multiple themes, it is a great way to transition into exploring literary analysis and writing stories. A Six Trait writing...
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Cartoon Stories
All ages love to engage in cartoon writing –- little do they know that they actually learn quite a bit from it! In an instructional session focused on literacy syntax and vocabulary, your pupils work cooperatively to draw six pictures...
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Color My World Grey and Blue
Can colors help to convey a mood in writing? Explore this question with your class using the songs "Grey Street" by the Dave Matthews Band and "Blu is a Mood" by Blu Cantrell. After analyzing the effect of the color words in these songs...
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Dragonwings: Explore Chapters 1-5
If you are beginning Laurence Yep's Dragonwings, this will provide activities for the first five chapters. The objectives include making connections to oneself and the world, organizing information and events, vocabulary acquisition,...
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Picture Perfect Poetry
Do your language arts students love to draw? Use this lesson to reinforce poetic techniques with illustration. After drawing what they think poem would look like with no words, middle and high schoolers work on several different...
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A Monster of a Metaphor
What do Jeep advertisements and Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath have in common? They both employ the art of the extended metaphor! Using the Six-Trait Writing model, learners begin to work on their own extended metaphors. Development...
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Lesson Plan 18: Art Project! Design Your Own Book Cover
Finished your novel? What’s next? Designing the book cover, of course. But how to begin? After examining the covers of published books and noting the common elements of these jackets, young novelists design a front and back cover for...