Ready to take your poetry writing to the next level? Use an independent lesson to iron out all those forced rhymes, wrenched rhymes, and near rhymes from first-draft poems.

Who named the shapes, or the days of the week? Should words be removed from the dictionary if they're no longer commonly used? Are there too many words in the English language? Language arts students explore these and additional...

Hook your class into an exploration of and discussion about violence in video games with a cute animal clip and a video game trailer. After a quick discussion about how media can affect mood, class members read a related article and...

Focus on a passage about the new year with your English language learners. You can start with reading the passage aloud to your class, and then launch into the related activities. Pupils match phrases, complete cloze-style activities,...

Make the move toward incorporating more technology in your classroom and help to prepare your class for the professional world. Here is a resource that describes the Common Core standard while incorporating technology and English...

Prepare your class for argumentative writing with a close inspection of the controversy surrounding Theodore Taylor's novel, The Cay. All necessary articles and materials are linked at the beginning of the resource. Kids use the provided...

Looking for a project list to conclude a study of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn? The six suggestions included in the menu (a song, thematic box, CD case, book jacket, blog, scene) could be assigned to individuals or groups....

Newspapers and broadcast news. Social media, blogs, and blogospheres. Class members generate a list of news sources they use to get information about events. The big idea here is to introduce the necessary vocabulary and to establish a...

How do people solve problems in healthy ways? Writers explore a topic of interest in their multi-genre writing assignment exploring Zach's Lie. The final resource in a series of seven includes multiple scaffolds and organizers for...

Here is a must-have resource for studying fairy tales, myths, and folktales with your class! It includes instructional ideas, activities, and materials to support a month-long review of these three unique genres of writing.

Get in touch with the emotional side of writing by reading Words By Heart. The writing assignment helps learners make personal connections with the text and hone their writing skills by exploring a time that they had to forgive...

Finish a unit on Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea with a narrative essay. Based on Santiago's harrowing adventures, the essay prompts readers to think about a time when they were faced with a challenge, overcame a...

Need some ideas for poetry lessons? Check out this packet loaded with suggestions for elementary, middle, and high school writers.

Can you create a poem without writing a word! With found poetry, you can! Practice one version of found poetry with a lesson on book spine poems. Learners create poems by stacking books and reading the lines created by their spine titles.

Is your Kindergarten class about to read the book, Chicka-Chicka-Boom-Boom? If they are, and you want a few wonderful activity ideas to reinforce phonemic awareness and letter identification skills, look no further. Here you'll find over...

Wrap up your unit on The Cay with an engaging argumentative writing assignment. Writers must decide if they believe The Cay should be banned. The resource includes links to several articles, which have been addressed and examined in...

Finding and/or designing a menu of equally weighted synthesizing projects to end a unit can be a challenge. Simplify the task with this menu of individual and group projects meant to accompany a study of The Crucible. Presentations,...

What would change in your daily life due to a power outage? Here, learners explore the inventions brought to us by the one and only, Thomas Edison, and imagine a day without them. Scholars take part in a grand conversation and write a...

Students work in a small group to create news stories, feature stories and editorials/letters to the editor and organize them in a podcast, video-based program, or newspaper/magazine focused on Hurricane Katrina.