Explore narrative writing by participating in a role-playing activity. In this perspective lesson, learners define first and third person in writing and discuss how it changes the mood of the reader. The first activity has pupils write...

Help your class find their writing voices with this lesson plan 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...

Design an informational brochure to urge people to move to a specific community. The purpose of this activity is to expose pupils to expository writing. After creating the brochure, they write a three-paragraph persuasive or...

Whether you are teaching a newspaper unit in language arts, covering the First Amendment and censorship in social studies, or focusing on writing ethics in journalism, a unit based on the foundations of journalism would be an excellent...

It's no secret that children can be very opinionated, but rather than fight against this natural tendency, embrace it with this primary grade writing project. After a shared reading of a children's book about...

Visit the Magic Treehouse and take your class on a trip through time with a reading of the children's book Mummies in the Morning. Using the story to spark an investigation into Egyptian culture, this literature unit engages...

Using chapter 1 of Jerry Spinelli's Milkweed, middle schoolers write a personal memoir based on Spinelli's style and a Six Trait writing activity. The lesson suggests several ways to activate prior knowledge, including a picture book and...

Help your middle-schoolers expand their writing skills with this instructional activity on episodic writing, which focuses on story details, idea development, and organization. After reading "The Eighth Picture: End of Summer" from...

If you are planning a unit on memoir and autobiographical narrative, you should consider this resource. Using Internet research skills, pupils review works by James Frey and Henry David Thoreau. In response to these works, learners...

Teach your upper graders how to use an idea web to develop a topic for writing. After reading a variety of stories about friendship (a list of stories with the theme of friendship is included), model using an idea web. Class members...

Here's a fresh approach that combines research, business and personal letter writing, and creative story telling. Student groups research different decades in the life of a famous Japanese astronomer. They then craft a decade fact sheet,...

Support your writers! Clear procedures and appropriate support make this a superb resource for elementary writing instruction. Ready your class to compose original descriptive paragraphs inspired by the episode in Roald Dahl's James and...

Use your class's knowledge of pollution and water treatment to write an editorial to town citizens. They apply prior knowledge in order to compose a letter intended for newspaper publication, focusing on writing to an appropriate audience.

Writing a paragraph from details found directly in a text is the central focus of this thorough and explicit lesson plan. Using the stories Nasreen's Secret School and Rain School, third graders are lead step-by-step...

Writing becomes dynamic in a presentation. Presenters transform a piece of writing they have already composed about the Little Rock Nine into a presentation. The focus is transferring ideas from their writing into short prompts on cards...

Poetry is everywhere you look! Create found poems using headlines from newspapers and magazines. Young poetry focus on creating alliterative phrases with words they find in headlines, tying their poems to a central theme.

What's the best way to start a story? Learners write a memoir using effective openings. They research the process and work through a list of hooks to use in their writing. They use at least two hooks to begin their personal memoir. A...

In an effort to practice engineering design, STEM classes break out into teams and endeavor to make a working ink pen. To prepare, they read about writing implements through history, patents, and viscosity of liquids. Armed with this...

Honk if you love bumper stickers! Long used as a persuasive tool, bumper stickers are used to launch this study of persuasive writing. Each class member is given a bumper sticker and asked to formulate three questions the strip might...

Create to learn! Your class can create posters of transitional words and phrases to help them compose an explanatory text. They work in groups and focus on one type of transition (time, place, importance, etc.). They also create a poster...

Whether it's dark, delightful, or somber, set the mood with William Golding's Lord of the Flies. High-schoolers practice descriptive writing by creating the appropriate mood for an original scene, starring one of the book's main...

Maya Angelou's first autobiography,  I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, demonstrates both the author's exemplary writing and the themes of gender and racial injustice that perpetuate beyond the limits of the 20th century. Use a...

The book, A Week in the Woods is the focus of the very interesting language arts lesson presented here. After the book has been read, learners engage in study of certain parts of the book in order to gain a better understanding of how...

Students determine what grammar is and how they have learned it. In this creative writing lesson, students read "Style' Gets New Elements," and respond to the discussion questions. Students then present grammatical rules to one another...