Writing can become one-dimensional if authors don't involve all their senses. First, scholars observe a strange object which, ideally, they can touch and even smell. Without using certain words (you can create a list or have the class...

The class is presented with an image of a hand-carved leg. They act as art historians and hypothesize as to the purpose, nature, and creators of this amazing wooden leg. They compose journal entries from the point of view of an art...

Elementary writers practice writing descriptive paragraphs by adding adjectives and sensory words to their writing. They use a picture of a monster for their descriptive paragraph. This 12-page lesson should increase your charges...

Get your budding authors to use all five senses as they describe scenes in their novels.  They read an example of both basic and sensory writing. Then, learners put their senses to the test by describing six familiar scenes through...

How better to get your writers painting a picture with words than to actually have them paint a picture? Well, drawing works just fine in this case, but the idea here is to get budding authors illustrating settings from their novel to...

Have you assigned your learners a creative writing project, only to find that their incredible creativity doesn't easily translate to writing? Here's some practice to kick them into sensory overload! Using their five senses, they choose...

A vivid setting can bring a story to life. Challenge your writers to dive into this element as they complete worksheets in preparation for their first draft. This packet starts by giving an example of a description that simply tells who...

Reading, writing, and rings! A lesson from NASA combines space science with authentic reading and writing tasks. Included in this lesson are pre-reading activities, four mini informational booklets on Saturn, a structured note-taking...

Writer's workshop is an idea that's been around for years. Students write, read, and comment on each others writing in an authentic and thoughtful way. Here is a 21st century twist, 6th graders will use the class blog to create a...

If you could build your own world from the ground up, what would you include? Ask your pupils this question, and have them write about their worlds and share with partners. Then, show the short film, which includes some impressive world...

Give your class a tour of London! Before you get started, pupils can brainstorm what they do and do not know about the city and discuss how they think it may have changed over the years. The provided video shows footage from London in...

Add many seconds of beauty to your class with a short film and related project. The resource centers around a competition based on one-second segments of film, and the final compilation that came from the contest. Pupils identify moments...

Much of Robinson Jeffers' poetry is grounded in place. Read three poems with your class ("Carmel Point," "Bixby's Landing," and "Hands") and examine the locations described and language used in the poems. Pupils locate the locations on a...

Help young scientists connect with nature and learn about trees with a fun life science lesson. Heading out into the school yard, children choose a tree to adopt, taking measurements, writing descriptions, and drawing sketches of it in...

You don't have to travel far to learn about rocks, just step outside, pick up a stone, and begin investigating. After taking a class walk around the school grounds collecting rocks, young scientists practice their skills of observation...

Teaching young learners about similes is easy as pie with this primary grade language arts lesson. Following a class reading of the children's book, Quick as a Cricket by Audrey Wood, young readers learn the definition of a simile as...

The best stories ever written are those with characters that come to life. The fifth lesson of this narrative writing series teaches young writers how thoughts, feelings, actions, and dialogue add depth to characters. Pause the video at...

Dialogue really brings a story to life and can reveal a lot about its characters, plot, and setting. Explore how this literary technique is used to engage an audience as young writers begin drafting their narrative response to The Story...

Here is a lesson that incorporates music writing, and reading literature. The class reads chapter eight from the C.S. Lewis classic The Magician's Nephew. Then, just like in the story, they use music as inspiration to create (write)...

Improve your youngsters' descriptive writing. They study an object and write about what they see as a warm-up, then they read an excerpt from Paul Guest's memoir, One More Theory about Happiness. The next part of the activity prompts...

Set your class up for success with writing descriptive settings with these two graphic organizers. On the first page, writers note specifc details about their chosen setting and comment on how each character views the setting. The second...

Banish clichés from descriptive writing! Class members listen to and identify the overused phrases in the presentation. An activity is proposed, and a sample poem full of clichés ends the show. Some of the sound effects are distracting,...