Use a resource that highlights Roald Dahl's seven tips for imaginative writing while reading The BFG. The activities encourage learners to become creative writers through finding harmony, establishing stamina, engaging in imaginative...

To celebrate National Poetry Month, young writers focus on the role letter writing has played in the development of poets. They begin by journaling three to five associations to a writing prompt that requires them to identify their...

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...

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...

Authors use many strategies when writing stories. A series of extra support lessons breaks down those strategies, as well as key grammatical and phonics-based concepts to support struggling learners. The last of three lessons offers...

Can your youngsters trace a curvy line? Have them guide their pencil over part of a loop, then finish the line on the right side of the page. They can fill the rest of the page with their own curvy lines. A great way to work on fine...

How smart is that piece of paper? The activity introduces the idea of computer programming as a list of instructions written by computer programmers. Two individuals play a game of Tic-Tac-Toe in which one follows the commands...

Barbie has been an iconic figure in the lives of girls since the 1950s, but her existence has been full of controversy. A lesson plan on style, format, and genre explores that controversy by looking at three texts with different...

Readers participate in activities designed to increase their fluency with language. They collaborate in small groups to complete stem sentences about themselves. They write facts about themselves and answer questions asked by the other...

Develop an understanding of the open-ended questions that are a part of the college Common Application. Future college learners collaborate, discuss prompts acquired from the application, and philosophize on their plan of attack for the...

Young scientists demonstrate their creativity while completing several activities, to assess genetic variations and mutations. Instructors provide a list of options and scientists choose to write a comic strip, create a book,...

Monsters have feelings, too! Scholars explore a variety of emotions with a festive, Halloween flair with two dice-rolling activities. The first activity prompts learners to draw and write about a monster feeling a specific emotion. The...

Scholars read about and discuss how seven-year-old Morgan Bugg wrote a company to add avatar styles that reflect her. The company realized its error and added more inclusive styles to its avatars. Learners reflect on identity, what...

Phrenology, the belief that parts of your brain control certain aspects of your personality, is described in Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science. While we now know much more about the brain, learners use this...

Make a study of Charles M. Scultz's famous comic strip Peanuts in your language arts class. Class members read and discuss the baseball-themed book POW! A Peanuts Collection. After talking about themes and vocabulary, they complete...

If you have a favorite author, you probably recognize their style. Conduct a close read of the text, marking it up as they go. Collaborative sharing time and a summary writing prompt follow the main activity.

"Everything we have seen and touched and heard and experienced has, in some way, made us who we are." Your young learners will use this resource to create lists of influences (people, animal, nature, places, etc.) in their lives and to...

Get your junior high writers stimulated with the strategies and ideas available in this activity. Learners discuss and debate controversial subjects, and outline their reasons with an online graphic organizer (link included) that creates...

Does Bud use his rules to survive or thrive? That is the driving question of a lesson plan following the reading of Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis. In an argument essay prewriting activity, pupils use textual evidence to...

The opening exercise in this instructional unit introduces class members to the writing process they will follow to craft an informative, expository research paper that addresses their research question. To begin, writers are asked to...

Explore how the informality of electronic correspondence has affected communications in the workplace. Writers develop pages for a basic writing guide that contains rules and examples to help correct common writing errors. A great way to...

A class newsletter? The possible extensions for this activity are endless. After examining examples of news print-outs from hotels or workplaces, class members develop their own articles and produce a newsletter. A great way to keep...

As an assessment of their skill in crafting a compare and contrast essay, class members read and compare the portrayals of nature in excerpts from naturalist John Muir's My First Summer in the Sierra and from poet Emily Dickinson's...