Positive feedback is a great way to improve writers' skills. Scholars receive their draft essays back with teacher comments and start the revision process. Next, they prepare to begin their final drafts at home.

Students read a brief explanation of a situation in which a family is suing a school district because a teacher made a child spray himself with Lysol in front of the class, saying this would take care of his body odor. Students write a...

This lesson, which promises to improve the essays of your middle schoolers, contains a list of characteristics an essay should include. It breaks it down into the introduction, thesis statement, body, etc. There's also a list of things...

Practice working with different phonemes in consonants and vowels. Sounds are written on squares that get put on a rocket to "blast off" and meet other sounds. The teacher first models blending, then reads the new words. Young readers...

Third graders listen to directions as they perform a theatrical role.  For this vocabulary lesson, 3rd graders listen to and observe the adjectives given to them during a practice of their performance by the director.  Students...

Teach your class the basic format of a friendly letter. Pupils learn about the heading, greeting, body, closing, and signature. There is a brief quiz at the end to check for understanding. The links for this section work...

Get your class up and moving as they explore how to express movement and dance through words. Designed around two poems by Lillian Morrison about break dancing, the activity truly captures the creative and multi-sensory aspects of...

Don't let the title fool you, this worksheet has little to do with authors! Instead, it tests your middle schoolers on their knowledge of language arts vocabulary. Words like audience, intrigue, novel, and recognition are covered. 

Many youngsters do not know how to write a friendly letter! Show them this presentation to inform them. The PowerPoint splits a friendly letter into five elements: heading, salutation, body, closing, and signature. For each element,...

Students investigate the laws covering smoking in public places in their community and find out if city council or other governing bodies have considered changing these laws. Students conduct interviews and write an article explaining...

Explore the different types of discourse and language with your lecture students in this presentation, which explores "sweet language," "stuffy language," and "poetic language," among others. Helpful for English, Sociology, Semantics, or...

Young scholars study the nutritional information on food labels and become familiar with the basic dietary needs of the human body. They write letters to food companies.

As a prequel to a research assignment, class members explore writing citations in the modern Language Association (MLA) and American Psychological Association (APA) formats. In pairs, or individually, researchers use books and magazines...

Middle schoolers learn about words that have more than one meaning. They each create a PowerPoint presentation that has a word with multiple meanings at the top, then each of its definitions in the main body of the slide. They insert...

Learners read the story, dividing it into chapters per day until complete. They respond to the ad, just as Sarah, Plain and Tall did and use the correct parts of a letter used including a return address, greeting, body, closing and...

Prepare pupils to experience an authentic presentation. They will prepare themselves for giving speeches before their classmates. Then they discuss the introduction, body, and conclusion of a speech and then practice the concepts in...

What are the necessary components of a five paragraph essay? How does one interest their reader? These questions are answered with this 12-slide PowerPoint which details components of the introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion....

“Her cutting words were weapons that inflicted wounds upon my soul.” Figurative language is the focus of a worksheet that asks learners to underline the figurative language used in each example, and then to label each phrase as a...

Looking for a way to bring prewriting into your informative writing unit? Use this lesson to reinforce writing skills in your eighth grade language arts class. Young writers use a web graphic organizer as a prewriting tool for expository...

A simple idea, this exercise will help young learners practice metacognitive and language arts skills. At the end of each day of school, have each member of your class record, in their own words, what they learned that day. Merely...

Learners research holidays of Spanish-speaking countries and use their knowledge of the Spanish language to write and send email.

Read Animals Called Fish with your young Spanish language learners and talk about the different parts of a fish. After teaching terms like huesos, columna vertebral, aletas, escamas, etc, Learners...

Provide your English language learners with some additional practice completing sentences. They have to select the word that makes the most sense in 12 sentences. This sheet is designed for intermediate learners, as some of the...

Young scholars explore feline communication. In this comprehension lesson, students discuss how to read animal body language. Young scholars look at images of cats and decide what the animal is trying to say.