Curated OER
Further Improvements of Writing Skills
Improve writing skills by finding a personal writing style, using descriptive language effectively, and using precise language. Middle schoolers discuss individual style in writing and formal and informal language. They utilize figures...
Blinn College
The Writing Process
Lead your learners through the different stages of the writing process. Show them this presentation as they work through a writing assignment, breaking it up over several days of work. You might also post this on a class website as a...
Curated OER
Language Arts: Revision and Peer Editing
Students are able to evaluate their peers' essays to determine clarity, completeness, and persuasiveness. They are able to revise their own essays for greater clarity and fluency, adding explanation where needed and cutting extraneous...
McGraw Hill
Writing Prompts, Student Rubrics, and Sample Responses
Whether you are teaching mainstream, advanced, or intervention language arts classes, you will find something helpful in a thorough writing packet. It includes prompts, rubrics, responses, helpful hints, graphic organizers, and many...
Open Oregon Educational Resources
About Writing: A Guide
Ever wish writing was as easy as 1,2,3? About Writing: A Guide outlines the steps to successful writing. The guide begins by explaining the types of writing and then takes readers through the process. The guide even includes a section...
EngageNY
Planning for Writing: Introduction and Conclusion of a Literary Argument Essay
After completing three body paragraphs of an argument essay about life's rules to live by from Bud, Not Buddy Christopher Paul Curtis, it's time to begin writing the introduction and conclusion. Independently, pupils draft the final two...
Virginia Department of Education
Revising Writing
Junior high writers investigate other student’s sample writing and critique on how it could be improved. Skill emphasis is place on elaboration, voice, and sentence variety. The student writing is provided, but the checklist for revision...
Novelinks
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: Writing Strategy
How do your pupils believe others see them? Invite them to write narratives to explore the image they present to the word. The narratives, inspired by The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, are to be set at each pupil's hypothetical funeral.
Michigan Association of Intermediate School Administrators
Persuasive Essay: Grade 5
Improve your fifth graders' persuasive writing skills in four weeks. Working independently, in peer editing groups, and with instruction, writers work over the 17 sessions to craft an argumentative essay. They craft a...
EngageNY
Mid-Unit Assessment Part 2: Beginning the Writer’s Workshop
Writers learn about using sensory details as they revise bland sentences with more vivid language. Next, they begin writing the first drafts of their children's books, completing storyboards to effectively plan their writing.
Curated OER
Sentence Combining/Sentence Variety
Challenge your writers to improve their writing by introducing them to 10 strategies they can use to vary their sentence structures. Each strategy is described and examples given. Pupils then create their own sentences using this...
Curated OER
The Writing Process
Introduce young writers to the writing process. Activities model the steps in the writing process (prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, polishing). A logic tree template is also included.
Curated OER
Writing a Research Paper: Citing Sources and Revising
Learners complete a works cited page, make revisions on their writing, and improve their writing skills. In this writing a research paper lesson, students create a bibliography using MLA format and peer evaluate the papers of their...
MENSA Education & Research Foundation
The Writer’s Toolbox: What You Need to Master the Craft
Strengthen your high schoolers' writing with a series of steps for writing successfully. With sections on organizing an essay, choosing a topic, crafting a thesis statement, and revising a draft, the lesson encourages your class to...
Curated OER
Nonfiction Genre Mini-Unit: Persuasive Writing
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.
College Board
Strategies for Teaching AP Computer Science
Implement strategies from the beginning to the end. A collection of strategies and lessons span from the first day of school to after the exam. Resources cover basic information such as computer ethics and top 10 tips to a lesson on how...
Curriculum
Expository Writing
The beauty of the way this expository writing resource is structured is that the units can be presented as a complete writing workshop or sequenced throughout a course of study
Curated OER
Parrot in the Oven: Pre-Reading Strategy: 4 Corners
A four corners pre-reading activity introduces class members to the major themes in Victor Martinez's award winning novel, Parrot in the Oven: Mi Vida.
Curated OER
Choose Your Words Wisely
Improve word choice! Writers use dictionaries and thesauruses to aid them in choosing exciting words to incorporate in their writing. They rewrite sentences and practice identifying words that can be replaced using a better word....
University of North Carolina
Style
Just like you choose your clothes to ensure they fit the occasion, you should choose your words deliberately while writing. Style, the main topic of one handout in a series on writing skills, involves choosing words carefully and paying...
Curated OER
Convey Ideas in Writing
Write an unsent letter about a consumer scam, paying attention to the writing conventions of punctuation and spelling. This lesson could be adapted to fit a variety of social issues in which letter writing is appropriate. 4
University of North Carolina
Reading Aloud
Warning: reading your paper aloud may cause bystanders to think you're talking to yourself. However, as the 14th installment of 24 in the Writing the Paper series from UNC explains, it is one of the best strategies for revision. Through...
Curated OER
Heart of Darkness: List Group Label Strategy
Heart of Darkness can challenge even the best readers. Here's a pre-reading strategy that will engage class members and provide background and context for Conrad's study of racism, savagery and imperialism. Class members brainstorm,...
University of North Carolina
Conciseness
Twitter has helped people learn to express their ideas in as few words as possible, but away from the 280-character limit, writers still struggle with keeping their writing short and to the point. Conciseness is the focus of a writing...