Writing Exercise: How to Spot a Loser Sentence

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...

You could spend a full day discussing The Phantom of the Opera and not scratch the surface, but a set of lessons about the literary elements and themes of the musical production is a great start. Young thespians build upon the...

You don't need to be a food critic to describe your meal accurately! A series of activities introduce learners to vivid adjectives when writing about the taste, smell, and feel of food. After working with word choice, parts of a...

Using a motivating topic as the focus, this activity has learners write an email as though they are describing their new house. English language learners read an example letter, and then practice their own writing skills by writing a...

High schoolers analyze photographs as a development activity for their literacy skills. They will review the 6 Q's feature for analyzing photographs and analyze a variety of photographs and then write comments in the space around the...

In an ideal world, sentences in a college-level essay should feature a variety of sentence types. In reality, most papers stick to simple and compound sentences, two of the types a handout on sentence patterns discusses. Part of a larger...

Sentences made up of one word? Yes. Introduce kids to lexical ambiguity with a short video that shows how complete, grammatically correct sentences can be composed of one word used each time as a different part of speech.

As a writer, if you have a weak introductory paragraph or thesis statement, you might lose your audience! Have your middle and high schoolers practice writing introductory paragraphs that include clear thesis statements in response to...

Involve your readers in finding works of literary genius. Have each individual write down compelling sentences that they read or hear, whether in a newspaper, advertisement, book, movie, song, or any other place! Once each person has a...