Imagine a day in the life of a child who has to work 12-14 hours a day, seven days a week. After viewing images and reading stories of child laborers, class members select an image and write a richly detailed narrative about a typical...

What does an ice cream sundae sound like? Challenge young writers to move beyond visual descriptions and craft details that appeal to all five senses. The examples provided by the script in this resource show pupils how to create rich...

What makes a novel a novel? Class members select a favorite novel, record their impressions on a worksheet, and then come together in groups to discuss the elements common to narrative writing. Next, they identify the characters, the...

What we need is another day off! Pupils use a one-page worksheet to present their ideas for a new holiday celebration. After choosing a name and date, they describe how the holiday would be observed and what people would do to celebrate...

The memoir, Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson, is the focus of a unit designed for fourth graders. Scholars begin each lesson with a warm-up, then listen to a read-aloud of a section of the book. Pupils complete word work,...

Louisa May Alcott's Little Women is a literary masterpiece as well as a timestamp of the formative mid-nineteenth century in America. Using a primary source set of photographs, letters, and portraits, readers discuss the ways...

Students examine different flags from a variety of countries, describing what they see and writing about it.  For this descriptive writing lesson, students use detailed writing to show what the flag looks like using only...

Students examine descriptive writing. In this writing lesson, students listen to an audio version of the diary of Lt. Polly Hatchard and her expedition to the South Pole. Students explore the components of descriptive writing and...

Students practice descriptive writing in a thank-you note format. In this descriptive writing instructional activity, students read the example letter and analyze the corrections in the letter. Students read the example thank you notes...

Second graders analyze storytelling devices by examining sensory details in literature. For this descriptive writing lesson, 2nd graders define the 5 senses and practice using descriptive vocabulary words in their writing. Students read...

Students examine the use of adjectives in a product review, then write their own descriptive review. In this writing and word usage lesson plan, students first analyze the choice of adjectives in a New York Times article about the...

Explore descriptive writing and visual art. Listen to the story Go Away Big, Green Monster by Ed Emberley and generate a list of adjectives used in the book. Name familiar shapes and create a shapes list. Choose an adjective and shape to...

Young scholars practice descriptive writing by viewing auto-portraits of young children.  In this art analysis lesson plan, students examine an auto-portrait of their teacher as a young child and ask him/her questions about their...

What would you do if you got an extra day every week? Partners share some information about their routines and lives and write compositions about one another based on the information. Each partner tries to guess what the other person...

Combine participial phrases and creative writing with this lesson, which is equally helpful for writing skills and conventions. After a mini-lesson on participial phrases and reading the picture book Dancing in the Wings, pupils use a...

What is the root of the conflict between ranchers and environmentalists? Middle schoolers write their impressions of what an environmentalist is and does. They read the New York Times article "In New Wild West, It's Cowboys vs....

Explore algebra I/algebra II with this series of worksheets. Pupils write linear equations in slope-intercept and standard form, graph linear equations, and apply linear equations to real world applications. The six-page worksheet...

Students write a topic sentence to a paragraph and explain that it introduces the main idea. After a whole-class demonstration, students write a complete paragraph with their topic sentence and supporting sentences. There are some...

From British accents to Texan drawls, a character's dialect can be an important part of the reading experience. A Six-Trait writing activity guides learners through the analysis of a character's dialect (Daniel Keyes's Flowers for...

The value of this punctuation and grammar lesson plan is in the SMART board presentation, which takes pupils through the proofreading process. It would be a good way to introduce the idea of proofreading in your class before beginning a...

Extend the exhilarating learning experience of Dr. Seuss with five activities designed to reinforce literacy skills—site word reading, dialogue writing, story mapping, and more! Featured stories include The Lorax,...

What items would you need to survive if you were stranded in a remote place? Using chapter 10 of Gary Paulsen's Hatchet, middle-schoolers work through a Six Trait writing activity to create a story about their own survival in a similar...

Linear or not linear — that is the question. The lesson plan has class members translate descriptions into algebraic expressions. They take the written expressions and determine whether they are linear or nonlinear based upon the...

Help your young writers make their writing more descriptive and exciting in this figurative language lesson. Middle schoolers review their figurative language examples from Part One (linked to this lesson), and then write a paragraph for...