Having read and discussed Bullfrog at Magnolia Circle, third graders demonstrate their bullfrog expertise by writing informational paragraphs. Building on the note-taking and paragraph planning from the previous lesson plan,...

Many educators focus on the civil rights movement as it occurred after Rosa Parks incited the bus boycott. Extend the understanding of the fight for civil rights in the United States with this post-WWII instructional activity. Learners...

Class members examine examples that model how to develop and maintain a formal style and an objective tone in informative/explanatory writing. They also engage in a peer review activity and revise their work based on the feedback.

Art acts as inspiration for a conversation about human impact on the environment and creative writing. The class examines three pieces, looking for evidence of human impact on the landscape. They then write a first-person narrative, from...

Fourth graders view examples of help-wanted ads as they plan and create their own writing in the fourteenth instructional activity of this unit on colonial trade. The engagement of the class is captured when the teacher shares an actual...

Consider how well young scholars' favorite TV shows, movies and video games reflect the diversity of society. The instructional activity introduces your class to several media literacy concepts, such as how media conveys values and...

Everyone has a different point of view, even when it comes to the enormity of the universe. Two separate text passages explain the scope of a galaxy, prompting young readers to write an essay about each author's argument and how the...

The perfect resource for a beginning journalism teacher or someone designing a journalism unit, this activity prompts students to write a newspaper article. It covers all aspects of the writing process, such as a guided warm-up...

Lesson 7 focuses on building academic vocabulary and writing an explanatory letter with supported textual evidence. For the first five minutes of the lesson, the educator reminds the class of how to read and refer to the accordion...

Move beyond the five-paragraph essay with a lesson introducing young writers to various forms of expository writing. Class members examine description, cause and effect, problem solution, sequence, and comparison forms. They create an...

Dealing with the very topical subject of cyberbullying, this lesson plan will surely create some engaged discussion in your classroom. Young learners discuss the laws concerning cyberbullying in Canada, and then respond to a series of...

After reading "The Pied Piper of Hamelin," scholars discuss the emotions the events provoked in its characters. In pairs, writers compose a letter depending on the topic and style of their choice then reply to their own or a peer's...

The eighth lesson plan in the editing process focuses on flow and cohesiveness in the entire research paper. Class members examine color-coded pre- and post-revision model paragraphs and then work in pairs to revise and peer-review their...

Transitions are the glue that link paragraphs together. Pupils listen to a mini lesson plan on sentence structure and transitions and use what they learned to revise their informative consumer guides. Next, they self-assess their writing...

As the unit on research writing draws to a close, class members continue to revise and edit their papers, this time focusing on grammar, spelling, and punctuation (colon and semicolon).

Learners prepare for the end-of-unit task by evaluating previous homework and writing sentences with parallel structure and various phrases. Scholars do this by closely examining E.B. White's Death of a Pig. They examine the structure of...

Come up with a list of requirements for this expository essay on Esperanza's character in Esperanza Rising as a class and use the list to guide class writing. Here, learners will complete the first paragraph, discuss their notes for the...

Study and research the American Civil War in this explanatory writing lesson. Middle schoolers complete six activities to learn about the American Civil War and soldiers' views of the war. The lesson includes several options to complete...

Make a study of the First Amendment and its relationship to freedom. Pupils rewrite the amendment and discuss the central idea before focusing on a specific phrase. After discussing, class members write a journal entry about the included...

A 3-day exam assesses readers' comprehension. After hearing a passage from the story Kittens First Full Moon by Kevin Henkes, scholars work with a partner to discuss and sketch what they found memorable. Peers share their final products...

If a bar of chocolate was on the floor, would you try to pick it up? What if it was covered with glue? The eighth instructional activity in an 11-part unit designed to accompany The Twits by Roald Dahl has scholars imagine crazy...

In instructional activity 13 of this unit on colonial trade, young researchers learn about apprentices as they prepare to write help-wanted ads for the specific trade they have been researching. To begin, the class listens closely as the...

Help your class examine humanity's unpredictable nature through "Life Steps Almost Straight." Learners read various works from philosophers such as Viktor Frankl, The Buddha, and Nietzsche to gather textual evidence and explain their...

Close the unit on Esperanza Rising with an in-class analytic essay on how Esperanza changes over the course of the novel. Writers can use any of their notes and work from the unit as well as their drafts of the first two paragraphs of...