Combine your friendly letter lesson, grammar lesson, and technology lesson with this fun activity! Young writers compose letters to friends, and then convert the text to Webdings font. Their friends then decode the letter based on a key....

Eighth graders, in groups, explore all 26 amendments and group them accordingly.

Students become familiar with the conventions of print as they recognize Mother Goose poems. In this Mother Goose lesson, students follow the words from left to right as they read Mother Goose poems. Students recognize rhyming words and...

What motivated Europeans to explore the New World, and what effects did their exploration have on Native American populations? The second installment of a 16-part American Passages series prompts pupils to watch a video and read several...

Students assess samples of writing for each trait and discuss the rationale for scoring. They understand that the traits of writing offer a common language for revision. This lesson includes a scoring rubric for the students to use.

Fifth graders study conventions in writing. In this grammar lesson, 5th graders listen to samples with appropriate conventions and samples without appropriate grammar and determine which are appropriate. Students self-assess their...

Students simulate the Constitutional Convention. They describe how the members of the Constitutional Convention might have felt as they gathered and began the arduous and memorable task of writing the United States Constitution .

Develop novice script-writers. Small groups sift through a sample script, noting any script-writing conventions to share with the whole class. Using these conventions and plot structures, these groups compose a script for a 10-minute...

What is citation? Why cite? Researchers are introduced to the Modern Language Association (MLA) style guide for research writing. Examples are plentiful and color-coded to highlight specific aspects of the conventions.

A great resource for your unit on Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. Small groups conduct research about related topics (list included), write papers, present PowerPoint slide shows, and take a student-created test. Fill in a few...

Explore the paradox of the universe - or, at least, of popular music - with this lesson. Using the songs "Inaudible Melodies" by Jack Johnson and "She" by Green Day, your class will complete a graphic organizer to help them understand...

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...

To Kill a Mockingbird, Hunger Games, Brave New World. Welcome to Banned Books Week. As part of a study of censorship and book banning, class members investigate censorship, the purposes of censorship, and First Amendment rights,...

What was the relationship like between George and Martha Washington? To protect their privacy, Martha Washington destroyed all her husband’s letters after his death so historians have little evidence of their lives together. Two letters...

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

Let's get visual. Pupils plan visual displays to accompany their upcoming opinion speech presentations. Additionally, they practice editing sentences for clarity before revising their speech drafts.

Everyone loves haikus! They're short, quick, and fun to write! Analyze the rules and conventions of haiku. Readers interpret examples of haiku and develop a vocabulary for writing haiku. Then they compose a haiku based on a personal...

In the world of academia, conference papers and presentations play a big role. It's through conference papers that professors and graduate assistants share their research with others in the field. A handout on conference papers, part of...

Fifth graders review their writing for repetition of words at the beginning of the sentence.  In this informal writing lesson, 5th graders share examples of sentence beginnings.  Students use a thesaurus to find antonyms and...

Learners study writing conventions. In this writing conventions lesson plan, students study writing they have already completed and look for conventions they are already using without realizing. In a small group, learners discuss...

Students are able to evaluate their peers' essays to determine clarity, completeness, and persuasiveness. They are able to revise their own essays for greater clarity and fluency, adding explanation where needed and cutting extraneous...

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...

Students explore writing techniques by analyzing their own families. In this family values lesson, students view the film "The Incredibles" in class and discuss the different types of modern-day families. Students write about their...

Fifth graders collect data about regions of the United States using the Internet, library books, and encyclopedias. They write an essay persuading people to visit their state.