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Brochure Writing
What do you use a brochure for? Middle schoolers or underperforming high schoolers identify the attributes of informative brochures. Either bring in a few brochures you've collected or use the sample brochures attached here. While...
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Using Descriptive Language
Students examine the use of adjectives in a product review, then write their own descriptive review. In this writing and word usage lesson, students first analyze the choice of adjectives in a New York Times article about the iPhone,...
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Global Warming: Writing and Editing a Research Report
Bring environmental issues into your classroom! Practice writing and peer editing research reports on global warming and the greenhouse effect. Middle schoolers can work on their research skills, their writing skills, and how to...
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Let's Go Exploring!
Use a Courbet painting of a cave or tunnel opening to reinforce the importance of descriptive writing. Writers of all ages use sensory details to describe what the scene depicts as they pretend to be in the painting. Then they imagine...
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The Paragraph
Review the components of a well-written paragraph with your class. Be sure your writers include a topic sentence supported with main ideas and followed by a conclusion. Unity, coherence, and transition words are emphasized. Experiment...
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Five-Paragraph Essay
The great thing about this presentation on the traditional five-paragraph essay is the color coding. Each aspect of the essay is followed by a concise description and an example. Then a complete paragraph is presented with the key...
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Writing to Photography/Photography to Writing
Students improve their' writing by incorporating photography into descriptive and narrative writing exercises. They write descriptions of various professional photographic collections. Later they use their own and other classmates'.
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Writing with Writers
Students participate in Writing with Writer's, a step-by-step set of directions aimed at improving different genres of student writing. They identify the characteristics of different genres and follow a specified writing process to...
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Car For Sale!
Car For sale! For this GED prep lesson, writers develop a classified advertisement to sell a car. After a discussion of precise words and phrases, telling details, and sensory language, sellers draft their ad for review, revision and...
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Design Life: Exploring Society Through Art
Introduce learners to the design elements and artifacts of interior environments in Victorian Canada (or any people and era you care to explore) based on artwork that represents their world. Your secondary social historians view the art...
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Write into Fantasy, Humor and Suspense
Students discuss the characteristics of several different writing genres. They are given a prompt to and work in groups to continue writing in the style of a humorous, fantasy or suspense story. They share their stories with the class.
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Technical Writing / Siddhartha
Twelfth graders are introduced to and produce several types of technical writing. They watch a crime video and write a police report, explore websites and draft summary sentences, write a personal vision quest based on "Siddhartha" and...
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Continue the Writing Process: Drafting
Young scholars draft . In this writing skills writing selections. In this writing process lesson, students plan and draft persuasive and expository pieces following the provided guidelines.
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Writing a Reflective Paper
Students write about literature. In this writing skills instructional activity, students discuss recurring literature themes and then write reflective essays that about the themes in pieces of literature they have read.
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Review Steps in the Writing Process and Explore a Poem
Students practice their persuasive writing skills. In this writing process lesson, students write essays that meet the requirements of the included text element worksheets and analyze poetry of their choosing.
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Narrative Writing--The Hobbit
Hobbits, dwarfs, wizards, trolls, and goblins. Readers track these fantastic creatures through J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit noting passages of character description and habitats. Using specific passages from the novel, class members craft...
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Style and Voice
Develop the writing skills of your high school class. Writers consider their personal style and voice, read selections by other authors, and then write pieces that challenge them to experiment with their own style.
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Magic Pencil Story Starters
While mentioning adult learners in the description, this lesson could be used at any grade level. This activity gives a list of procedures and writing prompts to help unlock the writer in everyone. Learners of all ages could benefit from...
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You Call That Art? - Activity 1
Learners formulate a definition of art in the introductory lesson for a unit on various art forms. The learning emphasis is placed on Oregonian artist Duff Severe and reflective writing. Students compose an essay describing various art...
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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....
Film English
If At First You Don't Succeed
When faced with a challenge, how do your pupils respond? Starting with character analyses, learners participate in a activity about appearances and perseverance. They watch a short film, talk about common English expressions, and write a...
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Understanding Types of Writing
Students analyze the types of writing and answer questions about the writing genres. In this writing types lesson, students define and discuss the types of writing including expository, descriptive, persuasive, technical, and narrative...
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Paragraph Development Exercise: Comparison
Teach class members how to use comparison in their writing to clarify and enrich ideas. Referring back to the brief description and the sample paragraph, writers develop a paragraph that uses comparison effectively. More scaffolding and...
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Creative Characterization
Students write a character description journal in which they take on the voice of one of the character's made-up friends or relatives. They write a sketch of that character from the friend or relatives' point of view.