Tap into the imaginative minds of young learners with a creative writing activity. After reading the myth Giants and Mosquitoes, this student guide supports young writers as they brainstorm and develop their very own creation myths....

Join the newspaper business with a series of lessons and exercises focused on elements of journalism. The packet focuses on distinguishing fact from opinion, writing effective headlines, sequencing events, and editing and...

Each one of the learners in your class has a story to tell, so help them learn the most efficient and organized way to tell their tale. A thorough unit on narrative writing addresses the writing process, grammar, story structure,...

In expository writing, it is important to back up claims with evidence and details. Help your class to develop their writing with notes on different types of evidence. Once they have the basics down, practice with a sample thesis and...

Encourage narrative writing with a clever exercise. Class members watch episodes from movies and describe what happened to a character, including details about the setting, plot, and characters. Writers then craft a narrative about a...

November is National Novel Writing Month, so if your young authors are embarking on this journey, be sure they understand plot elements. This collaborative lesson fits into the context of the larger NaNoWriMo project; however, the ideas...

Binoculars are used as a metaphor for good descriptive writing. Class members first view a small picture and then an enlarged view of the same image in which the details come into focus. Next, learners examine a paragraph lacking sensory...

Designed for third graders but appropriate for older learners as well, this packet of materials underscores the necessity of teaching kids how to summarize, how to identify main ideas and supporting details, and how to ask questions...

Your plane has crashed in the Sahara desert. What do you do? Explore the possibilities with a role-playing activity based on Antoine de Saint Éxupery's The Little Prince. In groups, kids decide whether they would walk to find help...

After reading Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street, class members craft an essay in which they use evidence from a variety of vignettes to demonstrate how Cisneros develops Esperanza's character.

Fifth graders analyze William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, paying close attention to character development, plot, and dialogue. With daily reading and thoughtful discussion, scholars take pen to paper to respond to journal...

The world is a stage, and so is your classroom! Hone the skills of the next generation of Tony® award winners with a set of exercises, reference pages, writing prompts, and excerpts from famous plays.

Ten drama lessons are the perfect addition to your language arts or theater class. With a focus on script elements, plot development, and parts of a dramatic story, the lessons guide young playwrights through the steps of telling a story...

Conduct a close reading of chapter 9 of The Cay. Read the chapter again and ask pupils to respond to a list of included text-dependent questions. Finish the class with the provided writing assignment, which asks learners to use textual...

Small groups investigate plots of land to discover how abiotic and biotic factors interact. After recording their findings, scholars share observations with peers and self-reflect on the learning process. 

Every good novel needs a solid beginning! Setting the stage can have your budding authors stumped, so use this lesson to get them thinking. After examining the plot rollercoaster image (included) they consider the four places...

It's all about using peer resources in this writing process instructional activity, which includes a fantastic novel revision worksheet packet. Learners have read a partner's story draft the night before, and groups have a...

A series of reading activities is sure to engage your young readers! Based on comparing and contrasting ideas, the packet provides opportunities to compare characters, themes, texts, and other elements of fiction.

Statistics come front and center in this unit all about analyzing discrete data. Real-world situations yield data sets that the class then uses to tease out connections and conclusions. Beginning with the basic histogram and...

Fill-out a story map to help your scholars with pre-writing. They will use a story map template to pre-write. They also organize their ideas into steps which become the foundation for their first draft. Concrete objects are brought in to...

Fourth graders use a four-square graphic organizer to plan a paragraph writing about a wheelwright. Using gathered research from the previous unit, young writers discover how to organize a plot in preparation for writing a historical...

Hamlet has an unusual take on the criminal justice system when he decides to determine his uncle's guilt by staging a play. With the resource, scholars continue analyzing Hamlet's third soliloquy from Act 2.2 of Shakespeare's Hamlet....

Once upon a time are four words most children are familiar with when reading a fairy tale. But do they know that fairy tales are a great way to learn the literary elements of reading and writing? Use a thorough fairy tale unit...

Young historians use their planning graphic organizer to prepare a personal narrative draft on expert trades. Since the instructional activity is considered the mid-unit assessment, learners respond to a writing prompt related to the...