As part of a mid-unit assessment, scholars draft their inside-out poems and then work on their "Back Again" poems. Learners use a rubric and graphic organizers to guide their writing.

Answering questions is the best way to hone and revise your argument. Foster receptive writers with a workshop activity that promotes peer editing and argumentative writing skills. Given lists of both friendly and skeptical...

With the increasing emphasis on persuasive and argumentative writing, the lessons and strategies in the sample unit are sure to prove valuable—whether you are new to or an experienced pro at teaching persuasive reading and writing.

When life brings you lemons .. write about it! Scholars work with partners to complete graphic organizers analyzing two narratives. Next, they develop an outline for their narrative writing assignment about a personal experience with...

Scholars scour thematically aligned texts to gather a bank of words they can use in an original acrostic poem. 

Practice persuasive writing skills in this thorough lesson. After selecting issues and discovering viewpoints, middle schoolers write letters or brochures created to express the individual's perspective. The ideas are presented to the...

What would Ben do? Jumping off from the pseudonymous letters Ben Franklin fooled his older brother into publishing when he was still a teenager, young literary lovers dive into acting, writing, and addressing a local issue with wit and...

As a mid-unit assessment, writers use evidence from the supplemental reading articles "Globalization," "Our Addiction to Fast Fashion Kills," and "Bangladesh Factory Collapse: Who Really Pays for Our Cheap Clothes?" to draft an argument...

After researching an issue introduced in Tyson Miller's Dream of a Nation: Inspiring Ideas for a Better America, writers develop an original thesis statement and craft an analytic essay using evidence collected in their research.

Sharpen persuasive writing skills while trying to solve a community problem. Learners choose a burning topic and then write letters to persuade others to come around to their views. The provided procedures walk through how to guide the...

How do learners use textual evidence from a close reading to write a well-developed essay? Scholars try it by completing a mid-unit assessment based on their analysis of the first 15 paragraphs from "A Genetics of Justice" by Julia...

The opening exercise in this instructional unit introduces class members to the writing process they will follow to craft an informative, expository research paper that addresses their research question. To begin, writers are asked to...

Practice using concrete evidence from various sources to back up an argument. The instructional activity emphasizes the use of support in a persuasive speech, as well as the importance of appealing to an audience's logic and emotions....

Poems carved into the wooden walls of the Asian immigrant prisons on Angel Island provide upper elementary graders an opportunity to study not only the story behind the poems but to also focus on the figurative language employed by the...

Need a key to unlock writer's block? Introduce your writers to four easy steps that will release them from their mental prison. The brainstorming worksheet, designed to set free their imaginations, even has an answer key.

Why didn't Rapunzel's hair stop growing?  Why did it take the fairy godmother so long to intervene in Cinderella's affairs? Young writers consider unanswered questions like these and compose news articles investigating the true...

Students decide which issues are most important to their student body and work in cooperative learning groups to write editorials. In this editorial writing activity, students brainstorm a list of the most important issues and bring...

Outlines are a great asset to essay planning. Scholars read and analyze a model essay about the importance of daily reading and consider how it would look in an outline format. Next, they outline their own informative essays about rules...

To gain insight into the many different types of habitats, individuals must first get to know their own. Here, scholars explore their school environment, draw a map, compare and contrast their surroundings to larger ones. They then...

It's time to put pen to paper. Scholars complete the first part of the mid-unit 3 assessment, writing a short constructed response about international aid following a natural disaster. Next, pupils use informational texts and note...

Here is a must-have resource for studying fairy tales, myths, and folktales with your class! It includes instructional ideas, activities, and materials to support a month-long review of these three unique genres of writing.

Six tasks make up a lesson plan designed to reinforce comprehension and language skills using the poem "The Pied Piper" by Robert Browing. Scholars discuss and define unknown words, identify adjectives and onomatopoeia, review...

Look it up. Scholars use a dictionary and thesaurus to verify the meaning of the research vocabulary words they defined in the previous activity. They then use sticky notes to write a synonym for each word. Finally, individuals choose a...

Young scholars explore the elements of a narrative for its purpose, type of audience, mood, main character, minor characters, setting, and conflicts in the story. A story outline is developed and a five paragraph essay composed in this...