Wanted: New Authors!

A short story is only as strong as its characters, development, and conflicts. Encourage the young authors in your class to plan their stories based on the elements of narrative writing, all provided in brainstorming graphic organizers.

The perfect resource for a beginning journalism teacher or someone designing a journalism unit, this activity prompts students to write a newspaper article. It covers all aspects of the writing process, such as a guided warm-up...

Use drawings as inspiration. Have learners doodle for 10 minutes before beginning the lesson. Then, have them use their doodles to inspire a story. Several writing activities are included here to play with writing. One of my favorites...

Enhance a unit on historical fiction with an engaging writing lesson. Learners bring the Industrial Era to life as they compose their own historical fiction pieces based on primary source images of Pittsburgh steel workers. 

Working in groups, middle and high schoolers describe and discuss photographs depicting working conditions experienced by child laborers in the 19th century. They then write a persuasive paragraph supporting an amendment to regulate the...

A thorough lesson on persuasive writing takes middle schoolers through several activities, including group discussion, collaborative posters, and independent writing. They compare historical speeches and analyze the persuasive techniques...

This is a fantastic collection of a wide variety of rubrics for writing, listening, and speaking! The resource contains over 14 rubrics for assessing such items as a summary, autobiographical sketch and narrative, speech, oral report,...

The guiding question for this lesson is "Do computers and their contents shape who we are?" Open with a selection of Apple's commercials to introduce stereotypes and people's relationships with their computers. Then, read the attached...

Can we test whether lines ascribed to William Shakespeare were actually written by someone else? Science and linguistics join forces in this fantastic TED-Ed video to help us investigate the theory of whether history's greatest writer...

"You write because you need to communicate to the world your place in it." Many don't see themselves as writers, don't think they have anything to write about. Here's a video featuring three steelworkers who took part in a writer's...