Learners get in groups, take a list of words, put them into story form, and punctuate them. They present their story to the class and consider how punctuation changes meaning. Great excercise. 

Use the present tense to create written assignments. Critical thinkers take a passage written in past or future tense and rewrite it in present tense. They then write a set of instructions in present tense.

The conventions of written dialogue are the focus of a PowerPoint that explains the purpose of dialogue formatting and dialogue tags. Also included is an exercise that asks viewers to craft a scene for three individuals employing what...

Introduce expository writing to your elementary learners. Young authors write a three-paragraph informational paper using the steps of the writing process. They follow guided lessons to experience each of five steps. Included are tons of...

Does the lens of history portray George Washington as a good leader? A three-lesson unit looks at Washington's early military career as the commander of the Virginia Regiment, his role in the fight for independence...

Your learners practice writing ideas on paper and logically presenting them in an organized manner. They brainstorm ways to write down ideas while creating a travelogue about a particular U.S. geographic region. When they present...

Time to revise! Scholars revise their argument essays based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream using feedback from their teacher and peers. They begin their revisions after reviewing a mini-lesson on proper writing conventions.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" serves as an exemplar for a mini-instructional activity on semicolons. Working alone or in small groups, class members first circle all the semicolons in the letter, and then...

Have your class doing everything from reading literature, analyzing literary devices, identifying independent and dependent clauses, discussing, and writing creatively with the rich resource found here. After a mini lesson on independent...

Which came first: the chicken or the egg? As part of the end-of-unit assessment for The Omnivore’s Dilemma, scholars watch a video about organic eggs versus conventional farm eggs. They use graphic organizers to collect evidence as they...

Imagine how the wolf would tell the tale of Little Red Riding Hood or The Three Little Pigs. Young writers re-imagine classic tales by adopting the point of view of another character in the story. After reading models like The True Story...

Students explore early 20th century steel making.  In this U.S. history steel making lesson, students view and describe a postcard and a picture depicting exaggerated aspects of the steel industry.  Students listen to a poem...

Verbs are the most exciting words because they describe action. Kids can get excited about verbs too! Once they are provided with a solid description of what they are, how they are used, and what they look like in sentences, verbs will...

Sit or sat? Passed or past? Assess your pupils’ mastery of verb usage with 10 multiple choice questions. Learners must select the correct sentence from the listed four options.

Reinforce knowledge of adjectives and adverbs by game playing. To better understand English conventions young writers, use flashcards to identify the base word and its comparative or superlative form.

Young grammarians as well as language learners can benefit from a short presentation about using appositives to combine short, related sentences. After a brief definition of terms, pairs share their ideas and combine model sentences.

Reinforce the importance of the writing process with this publication lesson. Elementary and middle schoolers compose a parts of speech book which includes one page each for nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions,...

Which nouns are capitalized? Challenge young editors with these erroneous sentences, all of which require capitalization. After circling all the necessary capitals in 10 sentences, they rewrite two sentences (which are all in capital...

An interesting article on editors helps young writers understand the conventions of written English. They read a news article about an editor traveling America correcting spelling and punctuation errors on signs.  They discuss...

Class members discover what it means to publish their works. Working on a computer, young writers use an online dictionary to edit their spellings and conventions based on the information added to the rubric. From here, and most of the...

Study unusual punctuation marks in this punctuation lesson. Young grammarians work in small groups to research one of the unusual punctuation marks (semi-colon, colon, dash, comma, ellipses, or quotation marks) and discuss how the mark...

Students study Greek literature. In this Greek tragedies lesson plan, students explore the dance-dramas of Martha Graham. Students study the choreography that brings ancient Greek literature to life.

Students review Emily Dickinson's biography and examine themes and forms of some of her poems. They measure ways Graham integrates aspects of Dickinson's life and the themes and forms of her poetry into Letters to the World.

Stereotyping and discrimination are explored in this social justice activity.  Students listen to the book Dragon of Brog, in which mythical characters experience discrimination. Then, they sculpt a magical character out of...