The art of writing a letter has not been lost to email and texting! Teach kids how to format a friendly letter with a presentation about the parts of a letter, as well as prompting them to write a letter about their favorite holiday.

Learners explore the Constitutional Convention of 1787. In this U.S. Constitution lesson, students role play the parts of delegates in a simulation of the convention.

Pronouns are the most helpful parts of speech! Model the ways that interrogative, indefinite, personal, and demonstrative pronouns can specify meaning and enhance writing with a hands-on activity.

Pupils begin with a brain teaser, take notes, and formatively check understanding with a Chinese proverb. In addition to parts of speech, the resource also includes information about parts of a sentence. Teachers may extend instruction...

Examine the changing nature of language in the U.S. View and discuss excerpts from a PBS documentary with your class and then conduct Internet research, and complete a team project on the evolution of teen expressions. 

Writers work to create drafts of their end-of-unit assessments relating to A Mighty Long Way and Little Rock Girl 1957. Using computers to create the first versions of their essays, writers emphasize ideas and evidence before focusing...

Let's eat kids. Let's eat, kids. Commas make a difference! Conventions 101: A Functional Approach to Teaching (and Assessing!) Grammar and Punctuation explains ways to teach the importance and use of conventions. Learners take part in...

Fourth-grade writers applaud their historical narrative writing pieces through a Writer's Gallery. First, they read an assigned classmate's work and leave a positive comment on a sticky note. Once learners have read a couple of people's...

What is the difference between an adjective and an adverb? Encourages scholars to explore the answer to this question while building a foundation of the English language. The activity comes complete with an attention grabber, notes, and...

Help your learners get a good grasp on grammar. An insightful pre-test allows teachers to learn about their young writers' knowledge of the building blocks of grammar, so they can begin building a unit of study. It includes a...

Introduce class members to the conventions of the romance genre and the theme of familial relationships with Mahlon F. Craft's illustrated Sleeping Beauty. The themes are a focus of their study of The Winter's Tale.

A comprehensive and immersive series of lessons that examines various aspects of story development leads learners into writing a narrative of their own. Writers develop an understanding of the writing process as they use the learning...

Howdy, partner! Scholars partner up to look at the last two rows in the writing rubric. After discussing the details in the rubric about organization and conventions, learners use colored writing tools to circle feedback in their...

Is there such a thing as fate/luck? Can one fight destiny? As part of their study of Chinua Achebe's purpose in writing Things Fall Apart, class members answer these questions from Achebe's point of view and then from William...

Help your young writers pay close attention to their conventions and move toward revision with a straightforward chart. Learners can analyze 11 sentences on this page by noting down the first letter in each, the first of words in each,...

Prepare class members for the SAT Writing and Language exam with a practice test that prepares students for the types of questions and the kind of language used in the exam. Test takers must select the best way to fix poorly...

Augment your eighth grade language arts curriculum with a thorough set of reading comprehension activities and assessments. Focusing on a variety of skills, including vocabulary in context, text structure, main idea, and author's style,...

The capitalization rules are strict and inflexible—until you experience the fluid beauty of an Emily Dickinson poem. Ninth graders test their existing knowledge of language arts conventions with the many bent grammar rules in "I Felt a...

Where did the cherished ideals enshrined in the Bill of Rights originate? While history gives the Founding Fathers much of the credit, laws in colonial America influenced the Bill of Rights. An interactive web-based activity allows...

What is figurative language, and why do we use it? Introduce your high schoolers to some examples and discuss the importance of including this element in your writing. After studying a text and searching for examples, writers will...

How do you describe a jellyfish? Individuals write adjectives for Nomura's jellyfish, take notes, and check understanding with a formative assessment. Notes include the definition for adjectives, guiding questions to help writers...

Direct instruction on punctuation rules for titles is followed by collaborative practice in class. Two worksheets with aesthetically engaging graphic design provide practice. For 12 examples, small groups either underline, italicize, or...

Examine conflicting viewpoints in this lesson, in which middle schoolers write their own proposal for including a Bill of Rights in the Constitution. As a class, they discover how the Bill of Rights was not a planned document to be...