Do your young authors suffer from writer's block when they try to write short stories? Access their natural creativity with C-Gor, the writing monster! The instructional activity takes aspiring authors through a new writing process...

An extensive portfolio project encourages your kids to reflect on their personalities with multiple writing assignments. From activities on extended metaphors to writing about an important day in their lives, kids explore the way they...

Improve your youngsters' descriptive writing. They study an object and write about what they see as a warm-up, then they read an excerpt from Paul Guest's memoir, One More Theory about Happiness. The next part of the...

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

Help your writers get started with these hooks! Twenty-five opening lines from the "Lives" column in the New York Times Magazine act as prompts for creative writing. Have your learners choose one prompt and write an original essay....

Boring dialogue can run a great story into the ground; get your novelists using dialogue as a tool to move their story into deeper and more developed territory. As part of a larger writing series, this instructional activity has a...

The Maya created amazing stone carvings and sculptures, but what were they for? Kids analyze the significance and purpose of a Maya stela and then write a creative piece. They imagine they are the stela, and write a story about what life...

Students complete activities to learn narrative writing. For this narrative writing lesson students are given writing prompts in order to better understand how to write in a narrative format.

What was your most (exciting, maddening, nervous, thrilling, etc.) experience in school? A part of a unit on narrative writing, in this instructional activity class members review the elements of the form and then choose an event when...

Here is a good interdisciplinary project that combines creative and narrative writing with studies of the Holocaust. Your young historians will compose a diary of experiences from the perspective of an individual living during the time...

How can you interest your reader? Here is a great lesson on reading and discussing the characteristics of a narrative. Elementary schoolers explore writing techniques to hook the reader. They identify their hook and share their...

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

Fourth graders use dance moves to perform narratives. In this dramatic performing lesson, 4th graders use strong and soft movements to show what character's voice is portraying. Students also use movement to show the feelings in the...

What is on your pupils' "Bucket Lists" - the list of things they want to do before they die? Their choices of activities for this list could be very revealing, and is a great source of inspiration for a personal poem. The lesson prompts...

Middle and high schoolers remember their most memorable experiences, and then connect their own narrative with an exposition about the topic associated with their experience. This New York Times lesson would be a great addition to...

Young scholars create holiday story while working in cooperative learning groups, using Chris Van Allsburg's Polar Express as a writing prompt.

Fifth grade reader/writers create an alternate ending to an episode in Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach in which our protagonist "loses" the chance to magically solve all his problems. Prompts students not only to write creatively...

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...

Students survey Neoclassical art and create a narrative based on their analyses. Focused questions and relevant background information provided by the Getty Museum provides a great foundation for students to understand art techniques as...

Pupils 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.

Learners write on a variety of topics, maximize creative and expository writing skills, develop focused writing, organize ideas, incorporate detail in writing, and exhibit varied and precise word choice.

Groups of learners get together and are given copies of the state quarter reverses from the 2002 US Mint issue. Each pupil makes up a story that's based on the scene that appears on the reverse side of the quarter. The goal is for all...

Explore the inventions of the past with a project on ancient tools. After reading an article about hunting during the Archaic period, the Late Prehistoric period, and the Historic period, kids fill in a cause-and-effect chart about the...

Research the necessary components of a planet that supports life after reading the article "All of a Sudden, The Neighborhood Looks a Lot Friendlier" from The New York Times. After finding their information, middle and high schoolers...