College Board
Evaluating Sources: How Credible Are They?
How can learners evaluate research sources for authority, accuracy, and credibility? By completing readings, discussions, and graphic organizers, scholars learn how to properly evaluate sources to find credible information. Additionally,...
Organization for Community Networks
Organization for Community Network: Writing Successful Paragraphs
How can you learn to write a successful paragraph? This site features a lesson plan to help your young scholars sharpen their writing skills.
Better Lesson
Better Lesson: Writing an Opinion Based on Facts From a Text
Students will plan a paragraph that states their opinion and cites evidence to justify their opinion about an informational text. This lesson uses biographies since students can easily be able to write down factual information from the...
Lumen Learning
Lumen: Writing Skills: Paragraph Transitions
This lesson focuses on transitioning between paragraphs including when to begin a new paragraph and transitions for different purposes.
Writing Fix
Writing Fix: Three Serendipitous Nouns
In this lesson plan, the book entitled A Mink, a Fink, a Skating Rink: What Is a Noun? (Words Are Categorical), written by Brian P. Cleary, is used as the mentor text. After learning the basic definition of noun, a person, place, thing,...
Writing Fix
Writing Fix: A Picture Book Writing Lesson: Start With What Isn't There
In this lesson plan, students will describe a setting, attempting to set a mood for their readers in two paragraphs. Borrowing a technique from Stephen Kramer's two-page introduction to Caves, they will begin with a paragraph that...
Writing Fix
Writing Fix: Serendipitous Character Names & Powerful Opening Paragraphs
For this lesson, Bertrand R. Brinley's The Mad Scientist's Club is used as a mentor text. Learners will analyze the introductory paragraph of the mentor text and its sequel. Then students will use an interactive button to select a...
Writing Fix
Writing Fix: To Imitate Two Nature Writers
In this lesson each writer will compose and revise a "showing" description inpsired by an object or a place in nature. Long before drafting, students will discuss and compare the writing styles and techniques of published authors who...
Better Lesson
Better Lesson: Revise and Revisit: Butterflies
Students will take a previously created paragraph and edit it to make it better by adding details, definitions, a topic sentence, or a closure to an informational paragraph. Resources include a PowerPoint presentation and pictures and...
Online Writing Lab at Purdue University
Purdue University Owl: Academic Writing: Sentence Variety: Strategies for Variation
This lesson offers suggestions to help you fix short, choppy sentences, combine sentences with the same subject, and revise sentences that sound the same. L.11-12.3 Language Functions/Style
Writing Fix
Writing Fix: You're on a Gigantic Roll
In this lesson plan the writer will imagine and compose a descriptive paragraph that focuses on a gigantic object moving through a specific setting and leaving destruction in its wake, modeled after the book James and the Giant Peach by...
Writing Fix
Writing Fix: Picture Book Writing Lesson: Pros, Cons, and Interesting Hooks
Inspired by the picture book How I Became a Pirate by Melinda Long, an enthusiastic tale that explores the pros and cons of being a pirate, students will research an interesting job and prepare to write about it. While researching, the...
Writing Fix
Writing Fix: A Literature Inspired Writing Lesson: A Time Traveler's Log
Students will read chapter four of The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, noting both the time traveler's descriptions of the new world of 800,000 ACE, and the conclusions the main character draws as a 19th century man. Students will think of a...
Utah Education Network
Uen: Whittle, Whittle It Down: Summarizing
This multi-day jigsaw activity engages students in summary writing. Students will work in small groups after direct instruction and write short summary paragraphs. Students will refer to the 'Five Rules For Writing a Summary' chart for...
TES Global
Blendspace: Space Exploration 5 Paragraph Persuasive Essay
Learn to write a five-paragraph persuasive essay by working through six links to videos, graphic organizers, and activities on space exploration.
Writing Fix
Writing Fix: Organizing a Story With Purposeful Paragraphs
In this lesson plan, students organize and design a narrative based on three developing ideas.
Lumen Learning
Lumen: Critical Reading: Identifying Thesis Statements
This activity focuses on identifying thesis statements including explicit and implicit thesis statements, "How to Identify the Thesis Statement" (video), topic sentences, paragraph parts graphic, and a self-check activity.
Alabama Learning Exchange
Alex: Fact vs. Opinion
This lesson is a hands-on way for middle schoolers to learn how to discern between fact and opinion. This is an important skill for citizenship in that citizens should be informed about what is happening in their communities and should...
Rock ’N Learn
Rock 'N Learn: When I Am Blue
This printable worksheet from Rock 'N Learn can be used as a long /u/ reinforcement activity or as an assessment. Students will read a fill-in-the-blank paragraph and write missing words that include /ui/, /ue/, or /ou/ vowel digraphs in...