Fusco’s English Class
Journal Writing Prompts
Inspire thoughtful journal entries with these detailed journal writing prompts. The resource includes 24 prompts that require learners to write expository, persuasive, and sometimes creative journal entires.
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Vivid Verbs
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...
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Strong Descriptive Writing: James and the Giant Peach
Support your writers! Clear procedures and appropriate support make this a superb resource for elementary writing instruction. Ready your class to compose original descriptive paragraphs inspired by the episode in Roald Dahl's James and...
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Continued Close Reading of Bullfrog at Magnolia Circle: Text-Dependent Questions and Vivid Words and Phrases
In the third activity from this unit based on the book Bullfrog at Magnolia Circle, learners focus on using specific details from the text-to-answer questions about the habitat of bullfrogs. While reading the text, young scholars are...
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Borrowing Narrative Skills from Mr. Fletcher: Using a "Prompts in Reverse" Technique to Inspire Your Writers
Help your class find their writing voices with this instructional activity which uses the work of Ralph Fletcher to guide a "Prompt in Reverse" activity. Using the chapter "First Pen" from Fletcher's Marshfield Dreams, learners decipher...
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Writing to Show, Not Tell: Dialogue, Sensory Words, and Strong Action Verbs
Consume, gobble, devour ... serving up strong verbs! Writers focus on using dialogue, strong action verbs, and sensory details in their writing. After analyzing a model narrative, they apply their learning to their own hero's journey...
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Lesson: Paint Inspiring Words
The painting Three Young Girls circa 1620, was believed to be painted after the death of the subjects' mother. Art enthusiasts analyze the image details to determine if they come to the same conclusion. They then use the sensory details...
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Nonfiction Genre Mini-Unit: Persuasive Writing
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.
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Show, Don't Tell: Details to Make Writing Come Alive
After each of three viewings of a 45-second video, aspiring writers employ vivid adjectives and precise, strong verbs to "show, don't tell." First they compose a single sentence, then three, and finally a five-sentence paragraph. Repeat...
Southern Nevada Regional Professional Development Program
“Tell Me a Story”: Moving from Reading to Writing
Narrative essay writing is the focus of a series of exercises that model for learners how to not only read a narrative, but how to also examine the techniques fiction writers use to create a setting, develop their characters, represent...
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Descriptive Writing: Using Art to Inspire description
Write with the senses! Try using art to inspire writers to consider all of the senses. Here, the class is divided in half. Each group looks at one of two images, imagines the senses that would be engaged, and records answers to five...
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Printable Story Starter: Treasure in the Daisies
Class members can practice using sensory details and imagery with this writing prompt, which provides a vivid introduction about a girl who discovers a treasure box in her mother's garden. The middle, ending, and title of the story are...
Roald Dahl
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
You can't read Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory without craving the rich treats described in Dahl's vivid prose. Young writers try their hands at sensory language with a lesson plan that prompts them to write about their...
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Writing Myths I
Explain a natural phenomenon in an original myth. After researching the phenomenon they have chosen, young readers use factual information to include in their myth. They find synonyms and new phrases to create vivid images as they write...
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Writing with Vivid Verbs
Students find vivid verbs in literature and use them in their own writing. In this vivid verbs lesson, students use a 'Thinking Thesaurus' of major verbs to study common verbs. Students then practice rewriting sentences using vivid...
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How Do Adjectives Improve Writing?
Using adjectives to create vivid descriptions is the focus of exercises in this resource. A cloze reading activity asks class members to add missing adjectives to passages from Mark Teague's The Lost and Found. They then read Teague's...
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Pennies of My Life Part II
Youngsters write and construct their own autobiographies based on The Hundred Penny Box by Sharon Bell Mathis. They engage in pre-writing steps, narrative writing, and peer editing. This is the second part of a two-part project...
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Identifying and Using Parallelism and Balance in Literature
Analyze the use of balanced sentences and parallelism in a narrative. Included in this resource is a narrative about serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Kazakhstan titled, "The Train Ride Home". Middle and high schoolers review...
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Dialogue Tags
Use a presentation on dialogue tags in a narrative writing unit or a literature lesson. The first two pages of the resource detail the information and examples in the following slide show, making it a good reference page for your...
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Capturing the Reader With Vivid Images
Young scholars examine the use of imagery to hold a reader's attention in an excerpt from John Deever's memoir "Mr. John and the Day of Knowledge". They are introduced to background information about the Ukraine and create original imagery.
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Zooming In, Zooming Out
Students develop their writing skills. In this writing lesson, students play a word game to help them formulate a plan to write descriptions of people or objects using descriptive words.
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Capturing the Reader with Vivid Images
In this using vivid images worksheet, young scholars identify vivid images and analyze their effectiveness in John Deever's "Mr. John and the Day of Knowledge." Students then write rich images for their classmates to imagine.
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Ocean Life Mural
How many oceans can you name? First, have learners try to name as many oceans as they can, and then have them locate and identify the oceans on a world map. They create a recognizable ocean animal using poster board and tissue paper....
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The Malnourished Paragraph
Students revise writing to improve style, word choice, sentence variety and subtlety of meaning after rethinking how questions of purpose, audience and genre have been addressed. They recognize the importance of details in writing.