Bring this lesson into your unit about creative writing and precise language. First, middle schoolers create a piece of writing with the help of their classmates. In the second part of this workshop, they edit their own piece of writing....

Bright, bold, and engaging, this presentation on elaborated paragraphs is a good way to reinforce your expectations for your class's writing. Each slide presents a simple, straightforward tip to writing complete paragraphs, including...

Middle schoolers analyze how to use writing for generating and organizing their thoughts before communicating them. They use the questions on the first handout to organize a three-minute introduction of themselves to their small group....

Students are walked through an outline (Power Writing) and shown how to elaborate on a main idea in their writing.

Emerging writers observe and demonstrate the process of writing an essay. As a class, they read and discuss the writing steps, read a sample essay, and write an outline for a three-paragraph essay. Then they write a final version of...

How do you write an interesting beginning, middle, and end of a story? With this lesson, young writers look to other stories as examples. Then, they use some of the attached graphic organizers to help them create their own story. Note:...

To better understand early American literature, which was usually written by Puritans coming to the new world, learners pretend they have just landed on Mars. They compose a letter home describing their experiences, the new landscape,...

The practice of developing lyrics by elaborating with sensory details and examples continues in the third lesson on songwriting. This time class members examine Jesse McCartney's "How Do You Sleep?" Using procedures established in the...

Follow this outline to write persuasive essays with your 11th grade college prep classes. Using the internet, they research a topic, citing their sources correctly. They work with a partner to peer edit their rough drafts, checking for...

As the saying goes, art often imitates life ... and literature! A series of activities designed to accompany a visit to the Ogden Museum of Southern Art encourage writers to find inspiration in various landscapes. The lesson includes a...

Third graders analyze the importance of characters in fiction writing and performances.  In this theatre lesson, 3rd graders identify the important characteristics of a fictional character and how to portray a character through many...

At the beginning of the lesson, the class discusses the central idea of a poem. After that, the teacher reads a poem, embedded in the plan, to the class. In groups of two or three, learners create their own poem in response to the...

Explore fantasy as a genre. After working in small groups to identify literary elements in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis, class members share their work and then use the presentations to help them prepare to write...

Want to explore the process of writing a persuasive essay and tie it in with the upcoming elections? Class members use Venn diagrams and the hamburger model of persuasive writing to write a five-paragraph essay on elections and...

Students read writing samples and discuss the differences between the writing with and without anecdotal examples. They write expository essays that include personal anecdotes.

Students find vivid verbs in literature and use them in their own writing. For this vivid verbs lesson, students use a 'Thinking Thesaurus' of major verbs to study common verbs. Students then practice rewriting sentences using vivid...

Students create stories using only pictures.  In this visual storytelling lesson, students read Pancakes for Breakfast by Tomie de Paola and analyze the wordless story.  Students create new text for the book by writing on...

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...

Personal narrative writing is usually a favorite form of writing for youngsters because they get to write about a personal experience. The lesson here asks pupils to take a piece of narrative writing and improve it by following...

A desk is used as a visual analogy to construct the main idea and supporting details in a story. The top of the desk is the main idea, and each of the four legs provides supporting details. The legs of the desk provide support for the...

This engaging activity is a great change of pace for the classroom. The activity starts with a simple message on the board “The teacher is angry.”  The instructor is to stomp around, drop books and glare—anything to show anger. The...

Using research notes on feudal roles in medieval Europe, learners work cooperatively to write a play about one day in the life of a boy or girl in the Middle Ages.

Introduce magic and imagination into your classroom with a poetry activity. Learners read the poem "Tiny" by Mandy Coe and use their magic tickets to visit any place they can think of! The final result is a poem describing where they...

Young scholars use proper writing techniques to write an effective description of the best or worst meal they have ever eaten.  In this proper writing techniques lesson, students review the parts of a composition and discuss was to...