Curated OER
Making an Argument: Effective use of Transition Words
Work on using transition words in context by prompting elementary and middle schoolers to write their own persuasive essays using transition words. They explore new forms of transition words and examine how they are used in an editorial...
Core Knowledge Foundation
Unit 8: Native Americans
Over five weeks, fifth graders listen to and discuss reading passages that explore the connection between Native Americans and nature. Following daily readings, scholars practice word work, including prefixes, root words, suffixes,...
Curated OER
Adventure Writing: Oregon's Landscape as a Setting
Students identify geographical features of different regions encountered by migrants on the Oregon trail. Students research how the Oregon landscape may have affected life and 19th century westward migration. Students write a narrative...
Curated OER
Can You Get the Signal?
What is a signal word? Recognizing these words is an important step in both reading and writing formal text. Review a list of signal words (provided and organized into specific categories), and then have your class play a game to...
Curated OER
Language Arts: Who Am I?
Twelfth graders write self-identity essays of three to five paragraphs in length. They include topic sentences, transition words, and concluding paragraphs in their essays, They read their essays to classmates.
Curated OER
The Rest Cure: Gender in Medicine and Literature
Read and discuss "The Yellow Wall-Paper" and the gender issues that the story brings up. Use articles from the time period to analyze, complete with specific discussion questions. After two days, scholars write an essay based on topics...
Curated OER
Be a Celebrity and Share Your Life with Us
Sixth graders discuss their likes, dislikes, hobbies, goals, and special events in their lives. They write a five paragraph autobiography focusing on style, transitions, and details. This is well-suited for either explanatory or...
Curated OER
The Missing Link
What is the missing link? Provide your class with this incomplete essay (it's missing transition words), and have writers place words from the transition word bank into the essay. Also, since only three of the five paragraphs are...
Curated OER
Creatively Creating Expository Essays
Students, after reading Fahrenheit 451, brainstorm inventions that could have been in the novel. They present their invention to the class and writing an expository essay about their creation.
Curated OER
Easy Essays Step 2
Third graders write essays after participating in mini-lessons that encourage better writing. They write using the model of a skeleton to which they add the muscles.
Curated OER
Seventh Grade Essay Unit
Seventh graders write a five paragraph essay and then branch out from there.
University of Chicago
Comparing Modern and Ancient Ideas of Ethnicity and Identity
Explore ethnicity and identity with a research and writing assignment. Class members conduct online research, looking in particular at images and carefully noting down their sources on notecards. They read about identity and compose...
Channel Islands Film
Island Cattle Ranching
Is cattle ranching on Santa Rosa island viable or non-viable? Rather than focusing on the issues of the transition of Santa Rosa island from a privately owned island cattle ranch to a national park, class members are asked to consider if...
Walden Woods Project
19th Century Lessons for 21st Century Lives
The words of Henry David Thoreau on Civil Disobedience seem particularly relevant today, as are his writings and those of other transcendental thinkers who ask what it mean to live deliberately and what are the responsibilities of...
Curated OER
Essay Editing Lesson Plan
Students discuss reasons to edit their written work and observe how to correctly use proofreaders marks to correct a paragraph. In groups of four, students exchange previously written papers and write suggestions and comments for...
Curated OER
Three Reasons Why I Want To Be...
Students investigate the process of writing an expository paper. The purpose of the paper is established in the introduction and the supporting details are sequenced in a logical order. The paper possesses punctuation and grammatical...
Curated OER
Informative Essay Outline Lesson Plan
Students are introduced to how to properly write an informative essay. In groups, they review the steps of prewriting and how to make an outline for their essay. Individually, they practice completing their outlines and share them with...
Curated OER
Students' Awareness of Environmental Issues
Students use their journals to record their reactions to various readings. They write one of their required essays on an environmental theme. Students are given a variety of articles on the environment. They discuss the format of a...
Curated OER
Change of Perspective
After reading an example of a Cultural Connection about a particular person, class members are asked to think about what this person might experience on a daily basis. They then craft a narrative from the subject’s point of view.
Curated OER
Living to Eat, Eating to Live
Students develop a five paragraph essay.They write their essays, review rules related to subject/verb agreement and the use of transition words or devices. They find examples of transition words or devices in newspaper or magazine...
Curated OER
Forced Potawatomi Migration
Fourth graders write about the forced Potawatomi migration. In this primary source lesson students are read journal entries from an emigrating party of Potawatomi Indians. Students reflect on the items the Indians might have taken with...
Curated OER
The Editing Process
Students read a sample essay and evaluate them in groups. They write their own essay on a topic of their choice and use peer editing. They share their essays with the class.
Beacon Learning Center
Challenging the Human Spirit
High schoolers select a theme-related essay topic from Night, by Elie Wiesel, or The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka, and develop an essay that relates the theme to modern-day personal experiences. The essay follows a preset rubric...
Curated OER
Point of View and Mentor Relationships
Tenth graders analyze the role of mentors, point of view, and prejudice using the texts of To Kill a Mockingbird and Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. In this literature analysis instructional activity, 10th graders review...