Scholars examine the first Thanksgiving through books and interviews while they complete a KWL chart. Pretending they are part of the feast, learners craft a scrapbook page that features images related to their experience. Pupils reflect...

Young writers use the four-square graphic organizer to draft their historical fiction narratives' first, second, third, and fourth paragraphs on the wheelwright. The instructional activity promotes discussion and modeling of what makes a...

Have your older students assist young children with writing in this community service and literacy lesson. Middle schoolers become partners with a local elementary school. They assist the grade school children in writing a pattern book...

Imagine you are a soldier in the Civil War. What are you wearing? What do you need to carry with you? Examine the life of a person during the Civil War, from drummer boys to powder monkeys to musket-toting soldiers. Elementary...

Fourth graders use a four-square graphic organizer to plan a paragraph writing about a wheelwright. Using gathered research from the previous unit, young writers discover how to organize a plot in preparation for writing a historical...

Young historians use their planning graphic organizer to prepare a personal narrative draft on expert trades. Since the instructional activity is considered the mid-unit assessment, learners respond to a writing prompt related to the...

Middle schoolers complete a writing assessment task to demonstrate their ability to craft a narrative based on a variety of informational texts. They view West of the West's documentary Magic Isle, read three print resources about...

Have your class explore the art of storytelling through this lesson on fairy tales and folktales. Learners interact with a variety of fairy tales and folktales. They practice telling stories out loud as well as writing their own. This...

This St. Patrick's Day, young writers imagine they found a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. After a class discussion and brainstorming, scholars compose a narrative essay making sure they incorporate transitions and at least three...

Promote collaboration in the classroom with a historical fiction instructional activity. Fourth graders partner up and read the other's narrative to give feedback on vocabulary choice and the accuracy of historical information. After...

Foster reader confidence when encountering complex text and reinforce the skills readers have acquired to build and extend their understanding of text. The plan uses a section of Douglass’ narrative as an exemplar text. Directions for...

Pupils plan for a historical fiction narrative based on their previous research on expert trades from the Colonial Era. Individuals use the four-square graphic organizer to organize the information they want to be detailed in their four...

Fourth graders write a narrative from a race car driver's point of view. In this narratives lesson students use the narrative writing format to write about a race car driver's experiences in the Indianapolis 500. The students use a...

The second lesson in a historical fiction series encourages pupils to develop a character profile of a colonial person using research acquired in the previous unit. Learners prepare their historical fiction narrative by responding to a...

After watching West of the West's documentary The Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island, class members imagine how Juana Maria/Karana may have felt about living alone on the island for 18 years and craft a blackout poem or a narrative in...

A language arts instructional activity helps young writers identify elements that make up historical fiction. First, it guides them through elements of fictional pieces with vocabulary cards. Then, pupils work collaboratively to...

Are you looking for a way to teach sequence of events in your narrative writing unit? Bring this lesson to your middle school class, as it prompts young writers to create a narrative sequence map of events that have happened at school...

Students write a letter.  In this irrigation lesson, students review how humans and the environment can interact with each other, learn new vocabulary words having to do with Mesopotamia, learn about irrigation and view maps of...

What does is take to be a role model? Through grand conversation, and the use of books and a graphic organizer, scholars find out and apply the requirements to identify a role model within their family. They then journey through the...

Young historians practice in-depth, quality analysis of primary source texts in this three-lesson unit, which examines excerpts from the slave narratives of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and Caleb...

Here is a good interdisciplinary project that combines creative and narrative writing with studies of the Holocaust. Your young historians will compose a diary of experiences from the perspective of an individual living during the time...

During the eighth lesson in a historical fiction unit, pupils practice thoughtfully transitioning their ideas sequentially. After the teacher models how to add these transitions using the Wheelwright draft created in a previous lesson,...

Bring a time machine into your classroom with this writing lesson, in which young writers project themselves back in time and have a variety of choices from that point forward. They either write a conversation with a historical figure,...

Imagine what it was like to be a slave in the United States in 1845. Eighth graders are given an opportunity to experience life from the point of view of Frederick Douglass as they read and discuss an annotated passage from Narrative of...