It's time to refine writing and word choice. Learners work on Part 1 of their end of unit assessment by creating an essay titled What Makes a Hurricane a Natural Disaster? They use glossaries and graphic organizers from previous...

Scholars read and discuss an essay by 12-year-old actor Lonnie Chaves about racism, paying close attention to how racism presents itself in interpersonal and institutional ways. Learners reflect on how they experience or witness racism...

Winter, spring, summer, and fall! Every season is covered in a 14-page list of writing prompts. Included are story starters, reflection questions, poetry topics, and more.

Ready, set, write! Every great film begins with a script, and every presentation starts with a plan. Directors use their research and experience to compose an essay explaining the rationale behind their film's musical and visual choices...

Using their notes developed throughout the unit, class members prepare for the end of the unit assessment by writing a formal essay in which they "analyze how the author of The Autobiography of Malcolm X provides a conclusion that...

Follow the format of Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles with a journal-writing activity. Readers choose a character and examine the character's life and circumstances through brainstorming, research, and discussion before...

Entrance essays are the ultimate sales pitch! Show your seniors how to market themselves in the first of six college and career readiness lesson plans. Pupils discover the do's and don'ts of writing personal statements through research,...

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...

How do writers use evidence from literary texts to support analysis and reflection? With instructional activity 17 of 20 from the Grade 8 ELA Module 1, Unit 2 series, learners gather resources to prepare for an end-of-unit assessment....

Should primary graders have their own computers? Should animals be kept in captivity? Young writers learn how to develop and support a claim in this short unit on persuasive writing.

The final lesson in this narrative writing unit asks class members to craft a multi-paragraph essay reflecting on the structural elements Leslie Marmon Silko employs in her "Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit."

Plants prefer classical music to rock and roll. That's one of the claims in an informational passage that makes up part of a set of standardized assessment questions. The set is part of a larger collection of English language arts tests...

The Grapes of Wrath may be the most famous novel set during the Dust Bowl, but what other stories cover the same time? The unit focuses on the Karen Hesse novel Out of the Dust. Learners keep a timeline of the Dust Bowl, maintain a...

Genetic modification is a hot topic in the science and political world. A complete unit gives learners an opportunity to research genetic modification, play an interactive genetic engineering simulation, and interact with the information...

Narrative essay writing is the focus of a series of exercises that model for learners how to not only read a narrative, but how to also examine the techniques fiction writers use to create a setting, develop their characters, represent...

One activity, two essays, and one central theme: qualities of an argument essay. Here, scholars first describe the qualities of an argument essay regarding Bud's rules to live by from the novel Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis....

Help learners find the most important information in a text with a lesson on summarizing. As kids read through a passage about Johannes Gutenberg, they summarize small excerpts, put events in sequential order, and respond to two longer...

What ideas and philosophies guided the Transcendentalist movement in America? Scholars explore the topic, reading texts by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Additionally, they write essays comparing the authors' structural...

Growing up within a culture leaves a lot of ideas and values unspoken. Take a closer look at the cultures in which your learners live with a discussion activity that addresses cultural identity and traits of those living within the...

Fourth graders have likely heard the expression to cry wolf, but they may not know the saying's origin. A short reading passage tells the story and includes four comprehension questions for pupils to demonstrate their...

Through the journey of four stories of immigration, scholars complete graphic organizers and apply knowledge to create a visual representation of their findings on a large poster. Third and fourth readers write a letter to their...

Looking at literature through a critical lens helps readers connect the text to the larger world. An essay examining the theme "There is no ill in the world without a remedy" forms the main part of a sample comprehensive English...

Reading about history is nothing like experiencing it firsthand. Encourage your eighth graders to do the next best thing with a historical narrative prompt, in which they describe the experience of a first-time traveler on the...

Many teachers and districts want to give their pupils test-taking practice before state standardized testing occurs. Here's a resource that features a complete exam with numerous passages, a variety of item types, a conversion chart, and...