Looking for an easy way to encourage youngsters to write about a variety of different topics? Users simply choose an image to write about from a large selection of beautiful photographs and then compose original opinion pieces and...

Review the components of a well-written paragraph with your class. Be sure your writers include a topic sentence supported with main ideas and followed by a conclusion. Unity, coherence, and transition words are emphasized. Experiment...

Discover the lovely story of Raimundo Arruda Sobrinho with your class. Over the course of the instructional activity, pupils practice descriptive writing, write short narratives, collaborate in small groups, watch a powerful short film...

Young writers examine dialogue conventions, including indentation, quotation marks, and expressing thoughts and feelings through a fictional text. By noticing where and when authors use dialogue, they decide how to incorporate dialogue...

Assign this narrative essay after finishing Puddn'head Wilson. Learners write about their own experiences with overcoming obstacles. A five-step process is laid out on this assignment page.

Help young readers find, identify, and use their voices with a set of empowering activities based on Peter H. Reynolds' trilogy of books. Sky Color, Ish, and The Dot focus on recognizing moods and treating each other...

Conclude your unit on Peter and the Starcatchers with an involved final writing project that requires learners to write persuasive pieces, compose short stories, create brochures about the setting of the novel, and choose from a...

Use drawings as inspiration. Have learners doodle for 10 minutes before beginning the lesson. Then, have them use their doodles to inspire a story. Several writing activities are included here to play with writing. One of my favorites...

Explore how photographs can represent a whole story to a viewer. Middle schoolers work on narrative writing techniques in this lesson, focusing on photographs from the New York Times to write first-person descriptive narratives....

What is it that makes people keep going when they face challenges in life? Ask your class to consider this question in relation to their own experiences and as they read material from The New York Times. Using personal experiences...

This is both a great idea and a great way to help your class organize a themed project. They use these worksheets to assist them in writing a creative historical narrative about the life and travels of an explorer. They'll compare and...

Readers take another look at  Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass to determine the purpose of the text. They use Frederick Douglass’s Purpose: Text and Questions handout and a close reading guide to direct their thinking. To...

An unusually inventive and entertaining presentation awaits you and your class. The first few slides introduce the animals that certain constellations represent. There are also creative stories by other students of fictitious animals...

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.

Add to children's enjoyment of the award-winning novel Maniac Magee with this fun collection of resources. From sequence of events and fact or fiction worksheets, to writing newspaper articles and creating advertisements based...

Should primary graders have their own computers? Should animals be kept in captivity? Young writers learn how to develop and support a claim in this short unit on persuasive writing.

The first lesson of a five-lesson unit designed for eighth graders has class members reading and watching a video of Edgar Allen Poe's narrative poem, "The Raven." They then craft their narrative poem, illustrate it, and share their work...

Chapter 3 of The Autobiography of Malcolm X discusses how central ideas are developed in a narrative. Readers use the provided annotated bookmark to record evidence of ideas such as racial identity, integration/separation, and systemic...

Students write a descriptive letter about life in ancient Mesopotamia. Through video streaming, students discover the history of Mesopotamia. They assume the role of a scribe and compose a three paragraph essay using main ideas and...

Equip your high school writers for the rigors of timed persuasive writing by employing the preparatory ideas available in this exercise. Learners use persuasive essays, provided by the educator, to acquire how to identify persuasive...

Integration versus separation. Readers of chapter 14 of The Autobiography of Malcolm X examine Malcolm X's views on other Civil Rights leaders and their integration ideas. Class members also return to the narrative essay strand of the...

Students engage in creative writing and performance using Flat Stanley. After reading Flat Stanley your class summarize their understanding and then create a flat image of themselves. Students then brainstorm ideas of how they would...

Focus on poetry this summer to enhance those comprehension, fluency, and language skills with a set of resources intended to explore different types of poetry, specifically lyric poetry. The daily activities contain differentiation ideas...

Create a buzz in your class with this collection of learning activities for the book Hi! Fly Guy. Including a list of comprehension questions, a sequence of events activity, a summary writing assignment, and a vocabulary list, this...