"The Dinner Party" is the anchor text in a lesson designed to encourage writers to use sensory details in their stories. After brainstorming descriptive words and phrases for the five senses, class members read Mona Gardner's...

Your young writers will practice identifying the hook, position statement, and main points of two examples of persuasive writing.

Incorporate technology into a literature lesson with an innovative language arts lesson. Middle schoolers read an electronic version of original stories or fairy tales, and after determining the point of view, rewrite the tale from...

Young writers read excerpts from Gary Paulsen's memoir to identify figurative and literal language that contain sensory details. They determine which selections are examples of sensory language and fi the language is used literally or...

Explore word meanings. Sixth graders identify examples of words with affixes while listening to the story Paul Bunyan by Steven Kellogg. They participate in the game "Pass the Parts" and practice separating given words into their root...

Turning 11 comes with a range of emotions. Explore those emotions by reading the short story "Eleven" by Sandra Cisneros. Readers analyze the main character's reactions to the events of her day. Then, they write an essay describing what...

Connect global examples of attempted genocide with a well-designed social studies lesson. It includes an excellent informational text with background information on the Holocaust, as well as worksheets, book report guidelines, and...

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...

How does recognizing the author's purpose help you draw conclusions about a topic? Using two articles (both are attached), learners brainstorm why each author wrote each article. Are their purposes similar or different? Learners use a...

If you are interested in having a basic framework for teaching expository, narrative, persuasive, and descriptive writing, this resource may help; however, you will have to find information on the different forms of writing to share with...

Examine the text features of non-fiction. Start the lesson by reading editorial samples provided by their instructor and analyze the texts for word choice, details, and organization. An editorial example and graphic organizer are...

Learning how to draw inferences from text is a key reading comprehension skill. Here's a activity that gives readers a chance to practice by offering 20 descriptive sentences and asking kids to identify the inferred character trait,...

The characters in Lois Lowry's The Giver are rich and complex as they weave their way through the plot. Examine the character traits of one chosen person with a biopoem, which enables learners to follow a poetic format in writing a...

How can a screenplay create meaning and drama in ways that other forms of writing cannot? That is the question class members must answer as they compare the cantina scene of the screenplay for George Lucas's Star Wars: A New Hope...

Are you looking for a way to teach sequence of events in your narrative writing unit? Bring this lesson to your middle school class, as it prompts young writers to create a narrative sequence map of events that have happened at school...

Study historical events by combining the study of historical fiction and non-fiction. Learners read about true past events in historical fiction novels and then research non-fiction accounts of the same events. What are some differences...

Many people dream of getting a fresh start or starting over again. David, a main character in I am David, gets that chance and must learn to live life outside of the concentration camp. Scholars read about David's adventures as they...

Students explore the realm and limits of science. Engages students to give examples of topics that can be studied by science, and those that cannot. This also takes a examine descriptive terms, which reflect the true nature of modern...

Get to know the meaning behind the song "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" from the legendary 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. Groups of two take the roles of performer and questioner. Performers sing lines of the song while questioners...

Drama is ever-present in our daily lives and eloquently depicted on stage. Middle schoolers practice writing scenes based on different prompts and frameworks, and then perform those creative scenes for their classmates. The...

Students read parts of Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice. Using primary sources, they gain a glimpse into the early modern period's negative perceptions and stereotypes of human beings of African descent.

View attractive, three-dimensional models of an animal cell, a bacterium, or a plant cell. Suspended in a translucent, undulating cytoplasm, are all of the major organelles for life science learners to examine. They can zoom in, click on...

Have everything you need to know about the elements of poetry with a nine-page handout. Split into four categories—word sounds, meanings, arrangement, and imagery—budding poets may reference terms, read definitions, descriptions, and...