Spice up your writing! Your amateur writers will benefit from concentrating on understanding and improving verb use in writing. An introductory activity addresses weak verbs. A second exercise helps them see the importance of strong...

Students examine the writing techniques of professional authors and apply them to their own work. In pairs, they email authors to discover the tricks of the trade. Students create their own Website for their work.

Students read and explore one of Emily Dickinson's nature poems, "A Bird Came Down the Walk-" through interaction with a variety of art forms. Clips of a hymn to hear meter and the viewing of bird images exposes them to the language and...

Use a Courbet painting of a cave or tunnel opening to reinforce the importance of descriptive writing. Writers of all ages use sensory details to describe what the scene depicts as they pretend to be in the painting. Then they imagine...

Film poems? To concluded a poetry unit, writers select one of their own poems and create a film that brings to life the sounds and images of their work. Included with the detailed unit plan are daily lessons, student examples, a list of...

Helpful for an American literature or history unit, this instructional activity prompts middle schoolers to examine slavery in the United States. They read slave narratives that were part of the Federal Writers' Project and then conduct...

After reading The Cricket in Times Square chapter titled "Caught in the Kitchen," learners list three describing details about the characters and setting. Groups collaborate to find sensory details to support their character assertions....

Dander from the show Twisted Whiskers and characters from My Little Pony are featured in this three part lesson that explores using story pyramids to scaffold ideas, adding sensory details to enrich writing, and editing using common...

What do you see? Young reader tap into the visualization process as they listen to or read a fiction story and fill out a graphic organizer. Model this first with a think-aloud, showing scholars how you visualize a familiar story. For...

Present your class with an overview of poetry-related information. The slides are clearly organized by topic, starting with reading poetry, ending with myths, and touching on everything from the five senses to open and closed forms of...

Set your class up for success with writing descriptive settings with these two graphic organizers. On the first page, writers note specifc details about their chosen setting and comment on how each character views the setting. The second...

If you're tired of defining allusion, onomatopoeia, and satire for your language arts students, hand out a complete list of literary devices to keep the terms straight. Each term includes a definition that is easy to understand and...

Poetry is all about sound and rhythm. The sound of the words, the rhythm of the lines, and the emotional atmosphere created by these elements and the literary devices poets use, compress whole stories into a few stanzas. The specialized...

Using their keen eyes and ears, learners build story observation skills which they will use to create sensory detail in their art. They note all of the things they observed on a walk, categorize them by sense, and then use the same skill...

Students act out lines from Romeo and Juliet in a charade-like game.

Introducing or need to review literary devices and terms for a study of poetry? Though text heavy, the explanations and examples of key poetic devices will provide learners with the vocabulary they need to discuss and craft poems.

Access your young poets' senses and emotions with this activity, which guides them through the process of writing a "sense poem." After working on a sense poem as a class and modeling the procedure, individuals work on their own poems...

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...

Develop the writing skills of your high school class. Writers consider their personal style and voice, read selections by other authors, and then write pieces that challenge them to experiment with their own style.

True! Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" makes readers nervous. But how? Young scholars create a drawing while listening to a reading of Poe's eerie tale to understand how writers create the mood of their stories and what their writing style...

Take a look at Horace's "Ode 1.5" from Carmina in depth with an analysis worksheet. Included on the first page is the original Latin version of the verses as well as a literal translation. Pupils respond to questions relating to sounds,...

Read it, hear it, see it, do it! Young poets experience Edward Hirsch's memory poem, "Cotton Candy," by first closely reading the poem silently, then aloud, watching a video of the poet reading it, and crafting their memory poem of an...

We carry memories of where we're from; tweens and teens can capture these memories by first listening to several memory poems and then crafting their own. They analyze literary devices other poets use, brainstorm a list of images they...

Students discuss vivid imagery in a story.  In this figurative language lesson, students read samples of sensory language and then discuss the meaning of a piece of figurative language.  Students provide examples.