Freewriting: Exploring Everybody's Favorite Topic

Teach emerging writers how to master the topic sentence, supporting details, and concrete details. A list of transition words is also included. Several practice opportunities are listed here, presenting certain topic sentences (for...

Are student athletes under too much pressure to perform? Middle schoolers use evidence from a series of provided videos and articles to support their stance on this highly-charged topic. 

A strong writing resource, designed for high school or college-level writers, guides learners through crafting persuasive arguments. The packet not only provides examples of a variety of argumentative strategies, it gives pointers on how...

An extensive portfolio project encourages your kids to reflect on their personalities with multiple writing assignments. From activities on extended metaphors to writing about an important day in their lives, kids explore the way they...

The ability to identify the main idea of a text and summarize a text will help your learners get far when reading. This resource covers both main idea and summarizing in detail with six short lessons about main idea and five quick...

Examine character in depth. Over the course of these six lessons, learners explore their own character traits, determine the traits of characters in the books they read, practice comparing and contrasting, and collaborate in small groups...

Amateur poets explore alphabetical poetry. They choose a topic and brainstorm vocabulary that relates to the topic using each letter of the alphabet. The class then generates ideas for a group alphabet poem. After creating one as a whole...

Poetry is a wonderful way to explore language, express topical understanding, and incite creative thinking. After a trip to the local natural history museum (or zoo), learners write an acrostic or a cinquain poem describing one of their...

Learners analyze a graphic from an article and predict what the article might be about. After reading an article, they discover a journalist's experience of traveling across the United States to compare fast food restaurants. They...

Use a traffic light to model a very basic paragraph plan. The Go, or topic sentence, is written in green and expresses an opinion about the topic. Information that supports the opinion of the Go sentence is written in yellow and the...