Curated OER
Getting Started: Pre-Writing Techniques
Pre-writing activities are covered to help your middle schoolers examine topics and personal experiences. Your class will discover how to choose topics which create a strong piece of writing and incorporate personal knowledge.
Novelinks
The Little Prince: Response to Art Exercise
Depending on your perspective, solitude can be lovely or very, very lonely. Kids take a look at the simple landscape illustrated in Antoine de Saint Éxupery's The Little Prince, and write a short journal entry about their...
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...
Curated OER
Writing a Personal Narrative
Students complete a variety of computer file pre-writing activities to help them prepare for writing a personal narrative. They focus on including a beginning, middle and end to their narrative. They make a class book.
Smithsonian Institution
POWs
Why did Vietnam POWs and their families receive more media attention than POWs in previous wars? To answer this question, class members view artifacts, read articles, and engage in class discussion. Individuals then assume the...
Curated OER
Story Pyramids
Young writers generate descriptive words. They use pictures of various landscapes (from books, magazines, or the Internet) and complete a story pyramid. The pyramid (included here) asks to describe the main character, the setting, and...
Carolina K-12
How Do I Pre-Register and Vote in North Carolina?
Did you know that in some states your pupils can pre-register to vote? Teach the advantages to pre-registering and engage the classroom in an intriguing discussion about youth voting trends. Class members participates in a live polling...
Virginia Department of Education
The Writing Process for Expository Writing
Struggling on what steps to take in your expository essay lesson? Or confused on what to include for your scribes? This exercise in the process of expository writing provides concepts and structure for the educator on what the writers...
Curated OER
Directed and Undirected Free-writing: An Activity in Brainstorming
Eighth graders practice pre-writing skills using brainstorming methods. Using music and meditation, they examine the difference between directed and undirected free-writing, as well as how and when to apply them to the pre-writing process.
Curated OER
Parrot in the Oven: Pre-Reading Strategy: 4 Corners
A four corners pre-reading activity introduces class members to the major themes in Victor Martinez's award winning novel, Parrot in the Oven: Mi Vida.
Curated OER
Writing About Winter
Students explore the characteristics of winter and use invented spelling processes to describe their observations. A word wall is utilized to assist the learner through the independent writing exercises.
Curated OER
Exercise and Water
Second graders discover the needs of their body by trying different types of aerobic exercise. In this physical education lesson, 2nd graders analyze The Busy Body Book by glancing at the pictures inside and predicting what the...
Curated OER
Daily Lesson Plan for the Struggling Writer and Speller
Special educators know that it isn't all about the lesson plan, but rather the strategies and practices you choose to use. Here are a set of research-based practices and tips you can use to inform your choices when teaching learners who...
Curated OER
Directed and Undirected Free-writing: An Activity in Brainstorming
Let your writers take a break from formal writing and experiment with undirected freewriting. First they'll discuss the difference between directed and undirected freewriting. Then they'll put their knowledge to work and create some...
EngageNY
Grade 9 ELA Module 3, Unit 3, Lesson 7
As the unit on research writing draws to a close, class members continue to revise and edit their papers, this time focusing on grammar, spelling, and punctuation (colon and semicolon).
Curated OER
Scrambled Sentences
Here's a clever classroom game that will help learners with their sentence writing skills. It's a fast-paced game that is played in groups. Each makes up scrambled sentences that the other groups must solve. There are plenty of examples...
Curated OER
"Lawd! Lawd! Lawd!"
From British accents to Texan drawls, a character's dialect can be an important part of the reading experience. A Six-Trait writing activity guides learners through the analysis of a character's dialect (Daniel Keyes's Flowers for...
Curated OER
The Tom Cruise Wedding
Scholars read a newspaper article about Tom Cruise's wedding to Katie Holmes in 2006. They define vocabulary words, complete comprehension worksheets, and analyze use of the present perfect and passive in the article. Individuals write...
Museum of Tolerance
Creating an Ideal World
To conclude a study of social justice and tolerance designed to prepare classes for a visit to the Museum of Tolerance, class members brainstorm a safe and peaceful world. They then write about their own vision of this world.
EngageNY
Correspondence and Transformations
Looking for a strategy to organize the information related to transformations? The materials ask pupils to identify a sequence of rigid transformations, identify corresponding angles and sides, and write a congruence statement. They...
Curated OER
A Picture Says a Thousand Words
Use photographs to trigger memories. Writers use a personal photograph as a starting point for an autobiographical writing exercise. They complete brainstorming activities that have them study their photograph before actually putting pen...
Novelinks
Running Out of Time: Anticipation Guide
Get your class ready to read with this anticipatory set for Running Out of Time. Small groups each consider one thought-provoking statement. After each group comes to a consensus, the whole class participates in sharing ideas and voting...
Curated OER
Martin Luther King, Jr: A Pre-and Post Reading Activity
Students complete an anticipatory set (pre-reading activity) concerning Martin Luther King Jr., then participate in differentiated reading exercises to read the selection "Celebrating the Life and Contributions of Martin Luther King Jr."
Civil War Trust
Civil War Soldier: Experiencing the Battle of Franklin
Fighting a war over home soil makes a living nightmare even more real. Class members describe the experience of a Civil War soldier during the Battle of Franklin, poised right at a major turning point of the war, after researching the...