A unit focuses on prewriting skills. Over 10 days, young scholars practice drawing lines and shapes, use play dough to build shapes, and track from left to right. Pupils put their sense of hearing to the test by listening for words...

Kindergarteners practice prewriting skills in a 10-day unit.  Young scholars blend sounds and syllables, build shapes with playdough, write shapes on paper, and trace their names.

Welcome to the World Café! Readers discuss A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park. They circulate throughout the classroom, stopping at different tables to answer a discussion prompt with their classmates and record their ideas on a chart.

The intricate craft of narrative writing can make a happy story feel exuberant or a sad story feel devastating. With 42 extensive lessons that include poignant discussion questions, standards-aligned self-reflections, engaging writing...

If you're looking to start a unit based around narrative writing, make sure to consider this resource while you're planning. This book covers five topics: writing personal narratives, writing narratives about others, writing...

Does Bud use his rules to survive or thrive? That is the driving question of a lesson plan following the reading of Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis. In an argument essay prewriting activity, pupils use textual evidence to...

It's time to make a rule sandwich! After exploring the writing assignment's rubric and analyzing a model essay, learners are guided through the prewriting phase using the sandwich technique. Pupils create their sandwich addressing the...

In a multidisciplinary lesson plan, you will focus your instruction around the West African folktale, Anansi Goes to Lunch by Bobby and Sherry Norfolk while your little learners sing songs, play games, participate in a grand...

For this prewriting practice worksheet, learners trace and print right fourth and half circles starting from the top line and the middle line. Students complete three writing activities.

Through grand conversation, help scholars identify issues that harm the Earth and find solutions on how to solve them. After voting—on what your class deems the most important problem—stretch writing muscles with a problem-solution...

Good discussion questions, quizzes, and tests teach as well as assess. Readers of The Great Gatsby will learn much from the materials in a 36-page packet designed to help students prepare for the AP Literature exam. Included in the...

Instructing learners on how to craft a good paragraph, a skill required of all writers, is the focus of a 23-page packet that includes directions, graphic organizers, exercises, and worksheets for guided practice. 

How can we heal our hearts through forgiveness?  The third activity in a series of six prompts readers to answer questions about Words by Heart by Ouida Sebestyen. Not only does it activate background knowledge on the...

Scholars work in pairs to discuss a film they have both seen by answering 10 questions about the movie. They then individually work on a film review worksheet using a different film than the one previously discussed with a partner. 

Before your students reached your morning class to learn about persuasive writing, they probably saw dozens of examples of persuasive communication in the form of advertisements. A short, introductory lesson inspires class members to...

Scholars discuss the many ways they use persuasion in their everyday lives and brainstorm specific ideas for encouraging someone to do something. With the list of persuasive techniques they made, young writers complete a graphic...

Learn how to organize your essay with relevant evidence that supports your thesis.

This series of 12 downloadable activities teach students some basics of story writing, using books or videos from the PBS "Arthur" series as a springboard. Activities include creating story maps, asking questions about characters and...

[Accessible by TX Educators. Free Registration/Login Required] You will learn how to use outlines, notes, graphic organizers, and lists to help you evaluate and organize your ideas.

Enchanted Learning provides several examples of graphic organizers that can be used for gathering Who, What, Where, When, and Why information, either for reading comprehension or prewriting. These template suggestions can only be printed...

This site from Houghton Mifflin Company provides a simple, reproducible chart to help students gather details of Who, What, When, Where, and Why. This could be used as a reading comprehension tool, or as prewriting for expository writing.

A fillable essay map in PDF format with boxes for an introduction, main ideas, supporting details, and a conclusion. Directions on how to use this type of graphic organizer as well as lists of teaching ideas and related resources are...

Use this graphic organizer to compare or contrast ideas, things, or texts. This is a great cross-curricular tool to use for both reading strategies and prewriting.