Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Writing Prompts for Middle School
Scratching your head when it comes to engaging writing prompts? Check out a list of prompts designed for middle school classes, which includes topics for persuasive writing, expository writing, how-to essays, personal narratives, and...
Curated OER
The "Write" Stuff: Strategies and Conventions for Imaginative Writing
A comprehensive and immersive series of lessons that examines various aspects of story development leads learners into writing a narrative of their own. Writers develop an understanding of the writing process as they use the learning...
Curated OER
Expository Writing (Informational Brochure)
Design an informational brochure to urge people to move to a specific community. The purpose of this activity is to expose pupils to expository writing. After creating the brochure, they write a three-paragraph persuasive or...
Ohio Literacy Resource Center
Compare & Contrast Essay
Comparing two texts can build a greater understanding of the texts and themes of the works. Take some time to follow the steps here to guide your pupils through the process of composing compare-and-contrast essays.
University of North Carolina
Music
Music is a universal pleasure, but writing about it can be a little trickier. An informative handout discusses common types of music writing assignments that one might encounter in a college-level course. Individuals read about musical...
Curated OER
Writing the Essay
Relate the structure of the essay to the structure of a building. The class compares an essay to a building, with the writer being the architect, the introduction being the foundation, and so on. They use the visual representation of a...
Curated OER
The Old Man and the Sea: Narrative Essay
Finish a unit on Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea with a narrative essay. Based on Santiago's harrowing adventures, the essay prompts readers to think about a time when they were faced with a challenge, overcame a disability,...
Curated OER
Organizing by Writing
Middle schoolers analyze how to use writing for generating and organizing their thoughts before communicating them. They use the questions on the first handout to organize a three-minute introduction of themselves to their small group....
Curated OER
Stating Your Case: Writing Thesis Statements Effectively
As a writer, if you have a weak introductory paragraph or thesis statement, you might lose your audience! Have your middle and high schoolers practice writing introductory paragraphs that include clear thesis statements in response to...
Curated OER
Moving to the Five Paragraph Narrative Essay
Your class just completed a graphic organizer as a prewriting strategy, but how do they take what they've recorded on their sheet and turn it into a five-paragraph essay? Help your novice writers with this 23-slide PowerPoint. An example...
Curated OER
Narrative Writing: Using Exact Words
Review the narrative writing process with your emerging story writers. They read a sample narrative and identify five vague verbs that could be replaced with a more exact, exciting verb. Then they write a personal narrative making sure...
Curated OER
Five-Paragraph Essay
The great thing about this presentation on the traditional five-paragraph essay is the color coding. Each aspect of the essay is followed by a concise description and an example. Then a complete paragraph is presented with the key...
Curated OER
Persuasive Essay Writing: The Real Story
How can you get others to agree with your point of view? This packet focuses on employing persuasive strategies and how to write descriptively. There's a writing sample provided, and a great graphic organizer. Use these tools to help...
Curated OER
Grade A: The Market for a Yale Woman's Eggs by Jessica Cohen
What would it be like to sell your eggs to a couple who can't have children on their own? Could you even imagine it? As most of us have never been in this position, this descriptive essay is really quite interesting. The reading itself...
K20 LEARN
Introduction to Expository Writing
Move beyond the five-paragraph essay with a lesson introducing young writers to various forms of expository writing. Class members examine description, cause and effect, problem solution, sequence, and comparison forms. They create an...
Fluence Learning
Writing an Opinion: Student Council
A three-part assessment challenges scholars to write opinion essays covering the topic of the student council. After reading three passages, writers complete a chart, work with peers to complete a mini-research project, answer...
K20 LEARN
The Million Dollar Question: Informative Writing
Introduce high school freshmen to the characteristics of informative writing with a 5-day lesson that distinguishes informative writing from other modes. Scholars learn how to search for and cite reliable resources, then research and...
Curated OER
Narrative Writing
Binoculars are used as a metaphor for good descriptive writing. Class members first view a small picture and then an enlarged view of the same image in which the details come into focus. Next, learners examine a paragraph lacking sensory...
Core Knowledge Foundation
First Grade Skills Unit 4
Twenty-eight lessons make a unit that focuses on skills practice. Lessons explore r-controlled vowels, past tense verbs, nouns, adjectives, and two-syllable words. Pupils read a story, answer questions, and draft a descriptive essay...
Curated OER
Painting Places with Words Using John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men
Useful in an Of Mice and Men unit, or in a unit that focuses on descriptive writing, this lesson prompts young authors to impersonate John Steinbeck's writing style in the opening passages of the novel. A Six Trait writing activity...
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...
Curated OER
Adventure Writing: Oregon's Landscape as a Setting
Students identify geographical features of different regions encountered by migrants on the Oregon trail. Students research how the Oregon landscape may have affected life and 19th century westward migration. Students write a narrative...
Education Oasis
Creative Writing Unit: Analyzing, Interpreting, Discussing and Writing Various Genres of African-American Literature
A six-week unit takes high schoolers through various works of African-American literature, including poems, plays, and short stories. The lesson plan format includes a week-by-week description of activities, goals, materials, and...
Curated OER
Best Part of Me
After listening to the story, The Best Part of Me, learners will identify a positive physical feature of themselves, and create a descriptive poem about their favorite feature. Photographs are taken, and a nice final draft of the poem is...