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The Five-Paragraph Essay: Tips for Success!!
Need to review the five-paragraph format with your high schoolers? Although the presentation does not include a complete essay as a model, the concise definitions and explanations would serve as a good review before learners are assigned...
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Basic Guide to Writing an Essay
Introducing your class to essay writing? The gentle tone, concise explanations, and clear examples provided by a 17-slide presentation introduces young writers to the expository essay format. All that's missing is a complete essay with...
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Tornado Brainstorming
While the focus of this lesson is on writing about tornadoes, any topic could be substituted. The lesson provides a well-thought out overview of the writing process. Learners come up with a thesis statement, supporting details, and a...
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When A Story Met A Sandwich
How is a story like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? Use making a sandwich as a metaphor to remind your writers that a good, solid beginning, a rich and rewarding middle, and an ending that brings everything together spices up a...
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Animation Pre-Production
Does your class love reading cartoons? Use their talents and interests to examine the process of writing a story they wish to tell through a cartoon. They develop the beginning, middle, and end of a story based on their original...
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Paragraph Building
Build the skills your budding authors need to develop to compose well-structured paragraphs. Give them the topic sheet (included here), and have them write a cohesive paragraph using the ideas listed. Consider having them include two...
San José State University
Effective Argumentation: Premises and Conclusions
Augment argumentative skills with this handout and brief exercise. This resource outlines premises, conclusions, and joining words, and explains how these make up the foundation of logical arguments. After reading through this...
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Organizing Your Argument
Constructing a well-organized argument is the focus of this tutorial, originally created for the Purdue University writing program. The slides can be adapted for any composition course or writing unit.
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Essay Writing
Are your learners working towards their GED? First they study the GED essay rubric, and then they read a sample essay as a group. After studying the basic elements, they write an essay of their own. After peer editing, they revise their...
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The Personal Narrative - Part Two
Does your langauge arts class journal frequently? Extend one of your journaling activities by having your writers choose a journal entry and take it through the five stages of writing. They will use the attached graphic organizer to...
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How to Write A+ Essays!
This lesson, which promises to improve the essays of your middle schoolers, contains a list of characteristics an essay should include. It breaks it down into the introduction, thesis statement, body, etc. There's also a list of things...
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Use Details from Text to Identify Cause and Effect, Draw Conclusions, Compare and Contrast
Third graders discuss research topics and write a paragraph on one of the provided questions. They focus on including key words from charts that the class has been compiling. They underline supporting details within the text they write....
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Teacher of the Year
Now is the time to identify the great teachers in your school! Discuss the characteristics of persuasive writing and analyze an example. Then, each pupil chooses a teacher who they feel should be named teacher of the year. They plan and...
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Five Paragraph Essay
The components of a five-paragraph essay are outlined on these slides. Not much explanation is given, but you can use this as you lecture and help your learners write. Follow the outline for what each paragraph should contain, and...
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Reaction Essay
Go through the process of writing with your class. Focus on in-class essays and how to form an outline with clear body paragraphs. A sample topic is given with the outline modeled in detail.
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Visible Speech: A Short Course in the Fundamentals of Writing/Lesson 3
Focusing on writing an introduction, this presentation provides a variety of techniques for how to begin. Although the question marks on slide six obscure the writing, the other slides are clear and legible and display good examples for...
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Visible Speech: A Short Course in the Fundamentals of Writing (Lesson 5)
Of these five slides, two consist of the title and directions; the other three list the parts of an essay and their purpose, as well as how to best begin an essay. In essence, this is a very brief PowerPoint that can be used as a...
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Around the Room Short Story
Collective story writing is a great way to reinforce the concept of story elements and collaborative learning. Young writers discuss story elements such as, setting, character, action, climax, conclusion, foreshadowing, dialogue, and...
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In Conclusion
Guide students on what reading comprehension and drawing conclusions really are. After discussing what they have learned and concluded from a short story, students read another story and work together to understand story details, and...
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Inferences
Inferences are the focus of this short, but effective resource. Students see that when all of the facts are missing in a piece of writing, one has to make an inference - a guess based on what is known. Students practice by considering...
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Identifying Clues to Help Solve a Mystery
Sixth graders find clues. In this mystery lesson students search for clues within Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett to solve the mystery in the story. Students record the details they find.
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Identify Cause and Effect
Young scholars listen to a story about school in a one-room schoolhouse. In this cause and effect lesson, students create a Venn diagram to find the similarities and differences in schools then and now. Young scholars discuss how past...
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A Trip to the Fire Station: comprehension skills
In this comprehension skills worksheet, students read the book A Trip to the Fire Station and complete comprehension activities. Students complete activities such as drawing conclusions, making inferences, synthesizing, important...
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Little Boy Blue
First graders read nursery rhymes and celebrate Mother Goose. In this drawing conclusions and predicting lesson, 1st graders create new ending for the nursery rhymes. Students gather data and make a graph showing their favorite rhyme.