Roald Dahl
The BFG Lesson Plans
A 55-page unit examines the novel, The BFG, by Roald Dahl. Six lessons pay close attention to friendship, dreams, and believing themes while analyzing interesting characters, writing creative vocabulary, smilies, metaphors, an exciting...
Curated OER
Strategies to Build Comprehension Skills
Reading strategies that realy work. Here is an introduction of six active reading strategies to improve reading comprehension. Super helpful for newer teachers.
Digital Public Library of America
Teaching Guide: Exploring Little Women
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...
Curated OER
Lesson Plan: Wide Open Spaces
What's the difference between city space and wide open space? Young analysts explore each space through writing, critical thinking, and discussion. They use what they learn to create collages that exemplify both worlds. Great discussion...
EngageNY
Close Reading of Thank You, Mr. Falker: Identifying the Superpowers of Reading
Third graders read excepts from the story, Thank You, Mr. Falker in order to gain practice in understanding an unfamiliar story by focusing on the details. They use a worksheet, embedded in the plan, which directs them to certain...
Curated OER
Writing Traits Instruction
Students assess and critique a wide variety of writing samples for each of the traits of writing strands from literature, composition writing, reading and assessment tools. They create and design a descriptive definition piece of writing...
Curated OER
Crafting Poetry: A Sensory Journey
Tenth graders experiment with poetry devices to write poems. In this poetry lesson, 10th graders participate in learning stations. Students create a word pool and select a word from the list to create a line of poetry. Students complete...
Curated OER
From Ordinary To Extraordinary Writing
Students investigate the quality of writing while focusing on the use of sensory words to convey meaning and ideas. The power of similes and metaphors is emphasized while they create and edit works of writing. The skill of descriptive...
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Vocabulary / Writing Strategies
Students will increase spelling and vocabulary skills. Then they will develop critical thinking skills. Next, they will develop expository writing skills. Finally, students will practice language skills with non-traditional text: a...
Curated OER
Middle School Writing: Semester Goals
Seventh graders practice their writing skills by identifying their goals for the semester. They write an essay of four paragraphs and then combine all the information into one. As a class, they create a contract for each of them to use...
Curated OER
Before the Tsunami
Learners practice their conversation and writing skills as they strengthen their ability to talk and write about the past. In this ESL lesson, students narrate a series of past events using past simple verb forms. Learners then...
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Summarizing
Students use their note-taking skills to write summaries of information. In this writing skills lesson, students use the notes they have taken in another lesson to write adventure stories by implementing the Rule-Based strategy.
Curated OER
Daily Language Practice Builds Skills, Test Scores
Students develop their proofreading skills. In this daily language practice lesson plan, students improve their writing skills as they edit passages. The editing work encompasses capitalization, punctuation, and grammar.
Novelinks
The House on Mango Street: List-Group-Label
Encourage close reading of the text and a focus on how Sandra Cisneros' develops her characters with an activity that asks teams to sort, group, and label character descriptions from The House on Mango Street.
Curated OER
Mining For Descriptive Gold
Young scholars describe places using language that is as vivid as possible. They will examine the writer's craft in describing a place by reading and discussing "Resurrecting the Miner's World." They will then revise their descriptive...
Curated OER
Picture This
Students create a descriptive paragraph conveying ideas utilizing a personal photograph as a prompt for their writing. This concept includes the writers emotions, personal issues, education, art and photography. They share insights to...
Curated OER
Shakespeare: The Nature of Writing and the Writing of Nature
This lesson plan uses Shakespeare's writing as a model for elementary students, encouraging them use their imaginations to explore to the evocative powers of language. It gives them a manageable piece of text which they can master and...
Curated OER
Come On Over To Maya Place
Fifth graders analyze the Mayan culture. For this Mayan culture lesson, 5th graders study the Mayan culture noting similarities and differences between the Mayan culture and their own. Students examine hieroglyphic writing and the Mayan...
Curated OER
Color Descriptions
Students create a book about colors. In this exploring colors lesson, students read the book Hailstones and Halibut Bones. Students select a color and describe how the color looks, feels, tastes, and smells like. Students write down...
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Introduction to the Writing Process: Character Description Essays
Students analyze and evaluate an essay and write a character description. For this character description lesson, students read and analyze an essay in a teacher-led lecture. Students brainstorm then write a...
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Fourth of July Lesson Plan-Studying Flags
Students examine different flags from a variety of countries, describing what they see and writing about it. In this descriptive writing lesson, students use detailed writing to show what the flag looks like using only words. ...
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Does Word Choice Affect the Quality of a Piece of Writing?
Students discuss the importance of word choice in writing. In groups, they rank a list of words from one extreme to the other. After viewing an example, students apply their knowledge of word choice by writing a descriptive paragraph of...
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Reflecting/Writing after a field trip or other experience
Learners reflect on field trips in writing. For this journal writing lesson, students write about a recent experience by using 4 of their senses to tell what they remember. They turn these into poetry.
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Describing How to Get a Shop or Restaurant
In this descriptive paragraph learning exercise, students first draw a map showing how to get to a location. Students then write sentences explaining how to get to a location using directional phrases. Students then write the sentences...