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...

Students practice problem solving skills by asking questions and participating in a design challenge. In this asking questions lesson, students work in pairs to ask questions to design a solution for a difficult personal problem....

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...

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...

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...

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...

Second graders use the writing process and submit a story to www.kids.com.  In this story writing instructional activity, 2nd graders choose a topic for a story contest.  Students develop their stories. ...

Students discover effective writing techniques to create persuasive essays. In this writing lesson, students investigate ways to express facts and points of view through persuasive essays. Finally, the students write their own persuasive...

First graders practice their letter writing skills by writing to a fictional character.  In this formal writing lesson, 1st graders read the books The Jolly Postman and Frog and Toad are Friends to examine the different parts of a...

Second graders use the writing process and create a silly story.  In this silly story lesson plan, 2nd graders will review person, event and setting and complete a chart for each.  Students will put a person, event and...

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...

Review story elements with your class. They will use examples from a story to develop critical-thinking questions. Then they use a graphic organizer to describe the setting, character, and plot of the story, focusing on how they...

Oh the joys of love! As a special Valentine's Day assignment, budding authors research the life of one of the most romantic poets, Keats. They read the letter, "To Fanny Brawne, 13 October 1819," then compose a love letter of their own....

Young journalists write diary entries from the point of view of a person involved in a historical event. They focus on including facts, clear narration, and accurate description of the individual's feelings. 

Can your pupils change the world? Explore this question with Ben Harper's song "With My Own Two Hands" and John Mayer's "Waiting for the World to Change." After listening to the songs, they discuss the tools at their disposal for...

Pupils explore brochure writing. They work in groups to brainstorm and categorize important places in their community. In addition, they gather information from the Internet, take pictures using a digital camera, and create a community...

What items would you need to survive if you were stranded in a remote place? Using chapter 10 of Gary Paulsen's Hatchet, middle-schoolers work through a Six Trait writing activity to create a story about their own survival in a similar...

Do military recruiters plan to visit your campus? If so, the visit presents an opportunity for class members to engage in a series of action projects. Class members interview recruiters, propose a PTA meeting to discuss the pros and cons...

Students interview staff members at their elementary school in order to get to know them better. They write interview questions, conduct an interview, write a paragraph about the staff member, and take digital pictures of that person....

Second graders practice asking the 5 W questions by reading a Boxcar Children book.  In this journalism lesson plan, 2nd graders read a single story from the Boxcar Children series and answer the 5 W's about each specific...

Sometimes it's okay to text in school. Young computer scientists work in the Scratch program to write a text message conversation among friends. They use different sprites within the program to represent each side of the conversation to...

Young scholars examine and create persuasive essays. In this writing lesson students engage in activities that allow them to understand how a persuasive essay is constructed so they may compose their own.

A Dorothea Lange photograph launches this study of metaphors. Using the questions provided, the class examines the image and the title to consider how Lange uses her photo as a metaphor. Class members then select an object they can use...

Show your pupils how to use guiding questions to help them focus their research into a topic. Using the framework provided by these questions, researchers explore a topic, collect interesting facts, and prepare a PowerPoint presentation...