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Revisiting Writing through Revision
Strategies to teach and motivate your students to revise their writing.
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Combining with Participial Phrases
Combine participial phrases and creative writing with this lesson, which is equally helpful for writing skills and conventions. After a mini-lesson on participial phrases and reading the picture book Dancing in the Wings, pupils use a...
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The Argument
After brainstorming, middle schoolers write an expository essay for a writing project. They focus on supporting points, organization, and writing conventions to develop a well-integrated paper. In addition, they revise, proofread and...
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It’s Your Birthday! – Conventions: Revision and Proofreading
Happy birthday! Celebrate everyone's birthday with this writing activity, which prompts seventh graders to research historical events in a country at the time of their birth to create an essay. Working in pairs, they proofread each...
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Revising vs. Editing
Are your young writers unsure of what to look for when asked to edit a draft of writing? Direct them to this simple and attractive printable, which uses two acronyms—ARMS (add, remove, move, substitute) and CUPS capitalize, usage,...
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Proofreading with Peer Editing
A standard peer editing activity, young writers get into groups and pass their papers to each of their peers in turn; each person checking their peer's paper for spelling, punctuation, and grammar mistakes. In a fun twist, your class...
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A Simple Task Made Complex: Types of Sentences
Looking for a lesson about differing sentence types? Use this lesson on compound and complex sentences in your grammar unit. After composing simple, compound, complex and compound-complex sentences individually and as part of a group,...
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Picture the Process
Students read Chasing Vermeer and relate the book to the author . In this writing process lesson plan, students view Blue's Photo Album and see how the author writes and revises her work. Students discuss the process that all good...
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Parts of Speech: Active Verbs
Students use White Fang to help them study active verbs. In this grammar lesson, students define active verbs and find examples in the the novel White Fang. Students then use ProQuest to research a place they'd like to visit. Students...
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Creatively Creating Expository Essays
Students, after reading Fahrenheit 451, brainstorm inventions that could have been in the novel. They present their invention to the class and writing an expository essay about their creation.
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Teacher of the Year
Now is the time to identify the great teachers in your school! Discuss the characteristics of persuasive writing and analyze an example. Then, each pupil chooses a teacher who they feel should be named teacher of the year. They plan and...
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Change of Perspective
After reading an example of a Cultural Connection about a particular person, class members are asked to think about what this person might experience on a daily basis. They then craft a narrative from the subject’s point of view.
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Writing an Original Fable
Students discover how to write fables. In this writing skill lesson, students review the literary elements of fables and take all of the steps in the writing process to create their own fables.
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Egyptian Burial
Students research burial tombs of ancient Egypt. Acting as pharaohs of Egypt, students create burial plans to decide what items they would include in their own tombs and why. They find another student to analyze their plan.
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Commas and Nonessential Elements Exercise 2
In this comma worksheet, students are given ten sentences and must determine whether the sentence is correctly written. Students must correct the sentences and identify nonessential information.
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Fragments Wanted (Not)
Learners rewrite newspaper employment ads using complete sentences.
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Interview! Magazine
Middle schoolers interview a subject and write a biographical sketch for a fictional magazine. In this interview lesson, students choose a person to interview and create two sets of questions. Middle schoolers conduct the interview....
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Sidewalks to Success in Middle School
Students write a brochure that educates incoming middle school students on how to succeed.
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First Class Mail
Students read The Witch of Blackbird Pond, and write a friendly letter to Elizabeth George Speare, the author, discussing their points of interest in the novel with her.
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Crazy Critters Teach Parts of Speech
Students create pieces of writing about a creature they have created. They examine the parts of speech and how they are used in their writing to see how they can write more specifically.
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Setting Goals for Success
Students construct SMART goals. In this goal-setting lesson, students discover how to write a SMART goal for their student portfolios. Working in pairs students write short-term goals that will build towards a long-term goal.
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News View
Young scholars read and analyze three different news sources that describe the same event. They compare/contrast the similarities and differences of the news sources, and write an essay describing the main event.
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Coast-to-Coast Book Design-Part 4: Let's Create the Pages!
Students work in groups to share their lists of A-B-C ideas they came up with from the previous activity. They review page layouts taught during lesson two. Students complete a rough draft of their page. They create a colored...
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Writer's Chair
Students peer edit and present a piece of writing to the class. In this writing lesson, students work in groups of three to peer edit their favorite piece of writing. Students take turns sitting in the "Writer's Chair" and presenting...