Other
4 Teachers: Persuade Star: Writing Persuasive Essays
This free online application is designed to help students in grades 5-12 write an online persuasive essay.
Scholastic
Scholastic: Writing Workshop: Persuasive Writing
This site has a great unit that leads students all the way through the writing process while composing a persuasive paper. Includes a teacher guide, mini-lessons, assessment rubric, and worksheets to help out at each step of the way.
Beacon Learning Center
Beacon Learning Center: Information Elimination: Lesson on Narrowing the Topic
This is a tutorial which focuses on how to narrow the topic for expository writing, how to determine what information to keep or eliminate, and what questions to ask yourself. Students respond to questions throughout. A comparison is...
Other
Newsela
[Free Registration/Login Required] Newsela offers new current events articles daily in areas ranging from the arts to war and peace. Each article is available at five different reading levels; grade level and word count are displayed for...
Other
National Scholastic Press Association
If you are involved in any way with a school newspaper, yearbook or other school publication, you should be familiar with the national Scholastic Press Association. Teachers or students with an interest in design, article ideas, or legal...
Read Works
Read Works: Passages: A New Letter for the Alphabet
[Free Registration/Login Required] Students read a nonfiction text about a man who is trying to add a letter to the alphabet and answer questions about comprehension, supporting details, vocabulary, transitions, and more. A paired text...
Read Works
Read Works: Passages: Learning to Skateboard
[Free Registration/Login Required] Students read a literary text about the relationship between a brother and a sister and answer questions on comprehension, main idea, text evidence, and more. Links to a paired text and paired text...
Media Smarts
Media Awareness Network: Lesson Plan: How to Analyze the News [Pdf]
Lesson plan focusing on the importance of understanding how the news is a product with a specific scope, structure, slant and style at the forefront of its production.
Education Development Center
Tv411: Reading: Parts of a Newspaper: Activity 2 of 3
This newspaper activity requires students to read eight headlines and then select what each would be about from the options given. When answers are submitted, an explanation is also given.
Sophia Learning
Sophia: Common Themes in Literature
This tutorial focuses on common themes in literature, beginning with a slide show discussing 11 different, common themes and literary examples. This is followed by a 11-minute YouTube video with students acting out common themes in...
Education Development Center
Tv411: Reading: Parts of a Newspaper: Activity 3 of 3
This newspaper activity is to look at the pictures provided, read what the stories are about, and select captions that would fit both the stories and the pictures.
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: Write an Expository And/or Procedural Text
[Accessible by TX Educators. Free Registration/Login Required] You will learn how to write an expository/procedural text that synthesizes ideas from several sources.
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: Themes in Literary Texts (English 6 Reading)
Learn how to infer the implicit theme in a work of fiction, distinguish theme from topic, and make complex inferences using textual evidence.
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: Synthesize Ideas in Informational/expository Texts
[Accessible by TX Educators. Free Registration/Login Required] Learn how to synthesize and make logical connections between ideas within a text and across two or three texts representing similar or different genres (including literary...
Other
Freeology: Journal Topics
Encourage students to write in their journals with this extensive selection of journal topics.
CommonLit
Common Lit: Where Did I Come From
CommonLit.org is a wonderful resource to use in a Language Arts classroom. Each story or article is accompanied by guided reading questions, assessment questions, and discussion questions. In addition, students can click on words to see...
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: Evaluating and Interpreting Media
[Accessible by TX Educators. Free Registration/Login Required] When people talk about media literacy, they are talking about learning to understand what these messages really mean. This lesson will help you take a closer look at a few...
A to Z Teacher Stuff
Ato Zteacherstuff: Report Writing in Primary Grades
This is a fun, hands-on lesson from AtoZteacherstuff! Students go through a study of frogs while learning how to interpret and restate factual information.
Other
Laura Candler: Green Court Claims: Are Green Companies Really Green? [Pdf]
In this lesson, students investigate claims that companies make about their products and business practices they use to imply that they are environmentally friendly. Students work in groups to research the claim they chose and then...
CPALMS
Florida State University Cpalms: Florida Students: Integrating Information: A Titanic Challenge
Read about the sinking of the Titanic and learn to identify key ideas in multiple texts, review similarities and differences between those key ideas, and identify the difference between important and interesting key ideas. This...
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: Formal Writing Across the Content Areas
This resource explores instructional practices for incorporating formal writing into English language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies instruction. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.6-8.1.d
BBC
Bbc Skillswise: Types of Listening
As part of the BBC's Skillswise unit on listening, this site focuses on the various types of listening. As learning tools, the site includes a factsheet, a worksheet, a quiz, and a game.
BBC
Bbc Skillswise: Listening for Specific Information
This tutorial presents a video, factsheets, and worksheets for learning how to listen for and understand information. It looks at how to handle different situations, e.g., arranging a delivery, asking questions about a product before...
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: Using Features of Literary & Informational Text to Guide Reading
A learning module that teaches students about using text features to guide reading in three mini lessons: Engaging with Text, Literary Think-Aloud, and Informational Think-Aloud. Download a PDF with lesson plans and printable handouts...