Curated OER
Events From a Story Graphic Organizer
Here is a well-designed graphic organizer which should help your readers organize the sequence of events from any story they read. The organizer should help any pupil who is trying to piece together events from a story for a book report.
Curated OER
Check My Writing
Use this resource as an evaluation tool, or have your class assess their own letter writing skills. They will use a checklist that they create during some interactive writing sessions as criteria for their self-evaluation. Teachers can...
Curated OER
Biodiversity in Sixth Grade
Sixth graders explore the nature of habitats on an ABC hike. In groups, they collect items that make up habitats including plants, feathers, and leaves among other materials. Students then classify and organize the collected materials...
Curated OER
Writing: Laying and Covering the Foundation
Your middle schoolers can become stronger writers with a lesson covering the basics. They compose effective thesis statements and introductions, discuss different ways to capture a reader's attention, and compare a poorly written...
Curated OER
Writing A Storybook
Students create a storybook using vocabulary from the topic "urban and rural life". They write about past events in a children's story. They present their story to the class at an author's tea.
Curated OER
Descriptive Writing: Parrot in the Oven
After reading a selection from Victor Martinez's Parrot in the Oven, pupils use the graphic organizer to decipher the sensory details within the descriptive paragraph. They list various details under the appropriate sense ("see," "hear,"...
Curated OER
Unleash Your Inner Editor
NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, is a writing project for which participants write an entire novel in a single month. If you have decided to this in your class, this resource will be useful for you. This is an editing...
Virginia Department of Education
Analyzing and Planning Persuasive Writing
Young writers work backward to analyze persuasive techniques. As a class, work through the provided persuasive letter: a plea to an imaginary city council to lift a city-wide ban on fast food restaurants and discount stores. Start by...
Curated OER
Discovering Angel Island: The Story Behind the Poems
Poems carved into the wooden walls of the Asian immigrant prisons on Angel Island provide upper elementary graders an opportunity to study not only the story behind the poems but to also focus on the figurative language employed by the...
EngageNY
Practice Planning a Historical Narrative: The Wheelwright
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...
Virginia Department of Education
Maintaining Organization, Clarity, Central Idea, and Unity
Introduce and challenge the essay organization skills of your junior high writers with the paper reconstruction activity in this demonstration. Theydetermine what the word organization means, and discover the basic organizational...
Curated OER
Developing a Central Idea in Narrative Writing
At the beginning of the lesson, the class discusses the central idea of a poem. After that, the teacher reads a poem, embedded in the plan, to the class. In groups of two or three, learners create their own poem in response to the...
Curated OER
Deciphering Word Problems in Order to Write Equations
Help young mathematicians crack the code of word problems with this three-lesson series on problem solving. Walking students step-by-step through the process of identifying key information, creating algebraic equations, and finally...
CK-12 Foundation
Commonsense Composition
Any teacher with common sense should use the perfect resource to improve composition skills. Perfect for flipped lessons and station rotation, the text details information about genres of writing with guiding questions for readers....
Curated OER
Spinning My Tale
Begin writing personal narratives in this writing lesson. Junior high writers start by writing a journal about their favorite holiday. They read a book at their skill level and use graphic organizers to record their ideas for writing....
Polar Trec
Bering Sea Fabulous Food Chain Game
In spring, the Bering Sea turns green due to phytoplankton, which live at the surface, experiencing a population explosion. Groups of scholars play a food chain game, writing down food chains as the game is played. After five to six...
EngageNY
Drafting a Historical Fiction Narrative: The Wheelwright
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...
College Board
2011 AP® English Literature and Composition Free-Response Questions Form B
It's all in the technique. Authors use many techniques to express themselves using writing. Two of the three essay questions require scholars to analyze the literary devices used by the authors and write essays about how these...
EngageNY
Reading Proficiently and Independently: The Power of Setting Goals
Scholars reflect upon their reading strengths and challenges to create personal reading goals. Participants use goal-setting verbiage in an accordion-style graphic organizer, a first step in writing a letter that details their reading...
Curated OER
The Odyssey: Hospitality or Divine Intervention Essay
Conclude a study of The Odyssey with a writing assignment that asks readers to investigate a central theme in Homer's tale. Scholars either provide positive and negative examples of hospitality or look for evidence of how the gods...
Nebraska Department of Education
A Letter to Myself
Middle schoolers craft a letter to themselves describing what their life will be like in four years using a prewriting organizer to guide their work.
University of North Carolina
Paragraph Development
There's no set length for a good paragraph, but the short block of text should contain key components. A handout on paragraphs, the 12th in a series of 24, outlines a five-step process for paragraph development. Additionally, the handout...
Novelinks
Touching Spirit Bear: The Literary Mandala
Even someone with a dark side can make a good decision—and vice versa. Readers explore Cole's traits and decisions in Ben Mikaelson's Touching Spirit Bear and analyze his sunside and...
Practice Using Lively Language
Practice Using Lively Language
Combine a study of biography writing with some tips for spicing up writing. After reading two passages, one much more descriptive than the other, pupils examine what makes one more interesting. They then brainstorm some ideas for writing...