"First Appearance," Mark Twain's tale about overcoming stage fright, serves as a model of a personal narrative and gets young writers thinking about milestones in their own lives. After examining student models and considering the...

Writing is a process, and lesson planning is, too! A personal narrative unit stresses the writing process to pupils, who first examine various stories and poems as a model of autobiographical writing and then write their own stories....

Students complete writing lessons to help students select a writing topic, prepare a writing plan, and create an interesting beginning. In this personal narratives lesson, students complete intensive modeling activities to write their...

Throughout 10 lessons, fourth graders learn how to plan, organize, write, and edit their own personal narratives. In the beginning, young writers come up with ideas of personal experiences and the emotions linked with those experiences....

Who am I? Pupils work to answer this question through a unit that explores personal narratives and identity. Exit tickets for activities that examine different poems, short stories, and autobiographical writing serve as prewriting for...

Enhance narrative writing instruction with engaging and interactive planning pages. Eight lessons take authors through the process of writing a narrative story, two lessons prompt writers to create a personal narrative, and a...

The unit offers second graders skills practice in tricky spelling and words, grammar—nouns and punctuation, reading decodable texts, and writing a personal narrative. Lessons begin with a warm-up and go into a concept review, word work,...

Launch a year-long writing program with a narrative writing unit that introduces young writers to the systems, routines, and procedures of the writing workshop.

A unit explores alternative spellings, ways to include nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and prepositions in sentences, and writing personal narratives. Over 25 lessons, first graders participate in whole group and small group instruction....

 The narrative works of Frederick Douglass engage learners in the topic of slavery. They will experience American history in a new way, a Douglass expresses his thoughts in his own words. Pupils then interpret this literary...

The memoir, Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson, is the focus of a unit designed for fourth graders. Scholars begin each lesson with a warm-up, then listen to a read-aloud of a section of the book. Pupils complete word work,...

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.

Health is more than measuring your blood pressure and eating nutritious foods. Eighth graders discuss the factors that play into an individual's health, including spirituality, social life and friendships, emotional stability, cognitive...

What motivated Europeans to explore the New World, and what effects did their exploration have on Native American populations? The second installment of a 16-part American Passages series prompts pupils to watch a video and read several...

Animals are the theme of this series of challenge activities. Extend scholars' learning opportunities by writing personal narratives and book reports, creating picture and alphabet books, and drawing scenes from stories read aloud.

A teacher's guide for Kindred provides instructors with a wealth of materials to enrich either a full-class reading or independent study of Octavia E. Butler's popular science fiction novel. The activities are designed to...

Sometimes a whole story can change based on the perspective of the person telling it. Practice identifying and analyzing point of view in various reading passages and writing assignments with a language arts packet, complete with Common...

Ah, the dreaded college application essay. Here's a unique approach to crafting a powerful personal essay. Class members read The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Leslie Marmon Silko's Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit, analyze the...

Frequently banned, often challenged, a mainstay of middle school curriculum, Tales from the Secret Annex, is the featured text in the seventh unit in the Teacher Guide Core Knowledge Program. The 134-page guide includes an...

What were the virtues and values that helped form America? Pupils watch and discuss a video, read biographies of early Americans, chart the differences between early American religious movements, write journals and letters, draw, and...

To prepare for crafting their own memoir, class members examine poetry by Margaret Atwood, Billy Collins, Robert Hayden, and Claude McKay, stories by Richard Rodriquez and Willa Cather, and Barry Levinson's film Avalon. They examine...

The poems of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson are the focus of a unit that asks readers to consider how an artist's life and changes in society influences his or her work. After careful study of Whitman's and Dickinson's perspectives on...

Would your ideal science lab be filled with bubbling beakers and zapping Tesla coils? Or would it contain state-of-the-art computer technology and data analysis? Dream big with an innovative lesson that connects math and language...

Students complete writing activities for fiction. In this fiction writing lesson, students complete four sets of activities in a writer's workshop format to practice reading and writing in a fiction style. Students develop plot outlines,...