Looking for suggestions on how to organize a creating writing workshop? For topic suggestions appropriate for various grade levels? Check out a resource packet, designed for English language arts instructors, that is packed with ideas...

Use a performance task to assess third graders' ability to read informational text. After they plan a lemonade stand business, young entrepreneurs implement that plan through informational writing. The task assumes learners can...

How do you get to school? Using the second page of the worksheet, you can draw a map of your route to school and paste on images of a scooter, bus, car, or feet.

Identify the unique personal attributes of your class members. Begin by viewing the Visual Thesaurus and discussing displayed attributes associated with famous American leaders. Using these identity maps as models, pupils generate nouns...

Learners create their own life map in which they introduce themselves to each other by sharing what they are most proud of. They use a life map to expressive themselves creatively.

A solid description of one way to teach narrative writing, this resource outlines the writing process from concept to completion. Class members create concept maps of moments in their lives and follow the writing process to publish their...

Second graders use acting to help them in a prewriting activity to develop a story. In this prewriting lesson plan, 2nd graders form a character map and brainstorm ideas for their story.

Introducing your class to essay writing? The gentle tone, concise explanations, and clear examples provided by a 17-slide presentation introduces young writers to the expository essay format. All that's missing is a complete essay with...

Imagine 28 instructional strategies, appropriate for all subject areas and all grade levels. Directed Reading-Thinking Activities (DRTA), Question-Answer Relationship (QAR) activities, KWL charts, comparison matrixes, classification...

How can you foster a thoughtful learning community for your class? First, the class brainstorms a list of behaviors that will help make the classroom a great place to learn. Then learners group similar ideas together and come up with...

Keep your class in conversation with others across the country or across the sea by writing letters to pen pals. The activity calls for students to be pan pals with pupils in Africa; however, the listed steps could be used for any...

Happy birthday! Celebrate everyone's birthday with this writing activity, which prompts seventh graders to research historical events in a country at the time of their birth to create an essay. Working in pairs, they proofread each...

Help your class use critical thinking when it comes to unfamiliar words. With vocabulary from Kyoko Mori's Shizuko's Daughter, kids write the word in the center of a graphic organizer, and find its category, comparisons,...

Students investigate Lewis and Clark. In this Lewis and Clark lesson, students search the Internet for information about Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery. Students use maps to understand the explorations and decide which...

To gain insight into the many different types of habitats, individuals must first get to know their own. Here, scholars explore their school environment, draw a map, compare and contrast their surroundings to larger ones. They then...

Bridge to Terabithia is a story about friendship that brings magic into ordinary life. Study guides may not be magical, but the guided questions, graphic organizers, extension activities, vocabulary, and discussion questions help...

You will never forget that moment. Scholars read a model narrative and analyze the moment a character became visible again. They compare the narrative to Okubo in Unbroken. Readers also assess the narrative essay according to a rubric...

The second instructional activity in a unit about how writers develop their central ideas and use evidence to support their arguments focuses on the role that scholars at Jundi Shapur, "The World's First True University," played in the...

There are 10 classroom words located at the top of this instructional activity. Kindergartners match the word to the object in the picture, they write that word on the line near that object. This is a great way for them to recognize...

Explore how illustrations add to a story. Young learners will look at picture books to see how the pictures tell the story. They create illustrations to go with a chosen story, and then flip the activity so they have to write a story to...

Engage your English learners with this resource. To begin, learners describe a map to a partner. After a vocabulary exercise and a jumbled letter activity, pupils are asked to write their own letter. The letter reading and writing...

Learners listen carefully to a portion of the Poetry Out Loud CD. They focus on the tones the poet uses in his recitation of a poem. Then they map a poem of their own so that a classmate can read it using the tonal qualities intended...

Students write a newspaper article related to a sports event.  In this article writing activity, students read sports-related articles, complete a graphic organizer to help them see the format of a newspaper article, then they work...