Curated OER
Create the Habit of Reflective Writing
Developing the habit of reflective writing can help you analyze, organize, and improve your teaching.
Fluence Learning
Writing About Informational Text: Music and the Brain
Even if you've never picked up a musical instrument, chances are that music has directly impacted your mental and emotional development. Sixth graders engage in a reading activity in which they read two articles on the impact of music on...
University of Kansas
Newspaper in the Classroom
Newspapers aren't only for reading—they're for learning skills, too! A journalism unit provides three lessons each for primary, intermediate, and secondary grades. Lessons include objectives, materials, vocabulary, and procedure, and...
Curated OER
How to Create and Manage Student Portfolios
Tips and ideas on how to establish and manage successful student portfolios.
Scholastic
The Flight of Amelia Earhart Teaching Guide
Amelia Earhart's accomplishments and strength of character extend beyond her status as one of the first female aviators in America. Elementary and middle schoolers learn about Earhart's early life and the historical context surrounding...
Curated OER
Applying Ahimsa to Traditional Stories
Investigate the life of Mahatma Gandhi by researching non-violent lifestyles. Learners define the word ahimsa and discuss the personal characteristics that made Gandhi a peaceful warrior. They also create a poster about the story "The...
Curated OER
Baseball Stories, Cards and Interviews
Everyone can be an MVP! Young learners create their own baseball cards about themselves in this autobiographical lesson. They use information about their lives to create a baseball trading card. They make flash cards using baseball...
Curated OER
Wild Horses of the Outer Banks
Students explore animal habitats. In this cross curriculum animal survival and writing lesson, students view a website about wild horses on Shackelford Island and discuss ways in which the horses have changed to this environment. ...
Curated OER
Episodic Writing Using Pictures of Hollis Woods by Patricia Reilly Giff
Help your middle-schoolers expand their writing skills with this lesson on episodic writing, which focuses on story details, idea development, and organization. After reading "The Eighth Picture: End of Summer" from Patricia Reilly...
Odyssey of the Mind
Odyssey of the Mind Curriculum Activity: Sentence Structure
Statements can be taken out of context and interpreted or used to support a very different view than the one originally intended. Young journalists start thinking about leading questions, sentence structure, context, and how they all...
Aspen Institute
The Voice That Challenged a Nation
Included here are step-by-step instructions for conducting a close reading of The Voice That Challenged a Nation by Russell Freedman. After an individual and class reading, class members read carefully through the text excerpt,...
Gwinnett County Public Schools
Analysis of the Tuck Everlasting and The Birchbark House Text Exemplars
Looking to introduce some text-based questions into your ELA lessons? Practice the kinds of skills the Common Core demands with the seven text-based questions and the essay prompt provided here. Designed to be a three-day lesson, day one...
MENSA Education & Research Foundation
The Writer’s Toolbox: What You Need to Master the Craft
Strengthen your high schoolers' writing with a series of steps for writing successfully. With sections on organizing an essay, choosing a topic, crafting a thesis statement, and revising a draft, the lesson encourages your class to...
Scholastic
Outlining Main Ideas and Details
Practice outlining and evaluating expository writing in this lesson. After discussing main ideas and seeing examples, young writers go through a sample outline and discuss the way to properly format a piece of writing. They then create...
Curated OER
M&M's and the Scientific Method
Sixth graders explore the scientific method by conducting an in class experiment. For this scientific averages lesson, 6th graders discuss the concept of the scientific method, and define the different mathematical averages, mean, median...
Curated OER
Create a Book with Student Treasures
You can't publish a story until after it has been revised and edited! Budding authors investigate the writing process while drafting an original story. They select a topic, complete a rough draft, edit it, revise it, and finally publish...
ReadWriteThink
Scaffolding Methods for Research Paper Writing
Rome wasn't built in a day, but researchers can be with proper scaffolding. This writing unit has scholars write a research paper through scaffolding of various parts of the process. Learners begin with identifying a topic and crafting a...
Curated OER
Critically Surfing the Web
The New York Times article “Online Diary,” launches this study of websites and how to assess them. Richly detailed, the lesson includes warm-up activities, procedures, journal prompts, discussion questions, and links to valuable...
Curated OER
Creative Writing Workshop (Middle, Reading/Writing)
Bring this lesson into your unit about creative writing and precise language. First, middle schoolers create a piece of writing with the help of their classmates. In the second part of this workshop, they edit their own piece of writing....
Curated OER
Life Reflections in Songwriting and Poetry
Students analyze, discuss and compare sources of inspiration, use of words and imagery, and other differences in writing styles between two featured songwriters. This is an introductory lesson to a creative project unit.
Curated OER
Eliminating Wordiness: Exercise 3
The focus of this writing worksheet is to have writers revise and edit a three-paragraph passage to eliminate wordiness and repetition. The paragraphs are quite long, and this should take most students quite a while to complete.
Curated OER
Digital Storytelling
Scholars of all ages can use the various tools of technology to construct and illustrate a story. Utilizing this resource, learners work with a partner to brainstorm and draft a story based on personal experience. They use computer...
Curated OER
What Makes Our Community Special?
Explore websites, complete research, and use technological tools to create a final multimedia presentation on what makes a community special. Learners of all ages work with a partner to research an interesting aspect of their community,...
Curated OER
The Newspaper Article
Have your class participate in an interview activity using an informational text about the Amazon. After reading a Cultural Connections story about a person from the Amazon, middle schoolers write interview questions based on the text....