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...

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...

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

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...

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,...

How can you get others to agree with your point of view? This packet focuses on employing persuasive strategies and how to write descriptively. There's a writing sample provided, and a great graphic organizer. Use these tools to help...

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...

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...

Explore narrative writing by participating in a role-playing activity. For 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...

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...

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 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...

Use photography as a tool to improve writing skills. Provide pupil pairs with a digital camera and challenge them to capture images of the classroom they find visually striking. Each class member then composes a descriptive piece about...

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...

Happy birthday! Celebrate everyone's birthday with this writing activity, which prompts seventh graders to research historical events in a country at the time of their birth to create an essay. Working in pairs, they proofread each...

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...

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...

Writer's workshop is an idea that's been around for years. Students write, read, and comment on each others writing in an authentic and thoughtful way. Here is a 21st century twist, 6th graders will use the class blog to create a...

HIgh schoolers respond to a persuasive article on using animal research. In this english instructional activity, writers listen to a conversation, and discuss the point of arguments. They write a critique on a certain film and share it...

Celebrate inventions such as lightning rods, bifocals, and stoves with a Ben Franklin Day. Young historians conduct research and write a paragraph about an accomplishment of Benjamin Franklin including an illustration...

What does it take to develop and publish a newsletter? Young academics create a newsletter with original artwork for their school or community. They explore social justice themes and spread messages of tolerance and inclusion. Scholars...