Curated OER
Shakespeare and Poe Teach Six-Trait Writing
A Six-Trait Writing instructional activity helps your middle schoolers liven up their word choice and shows them how to evaluate their own writing. Class members take a close look at the language used in poems by Shakespeare, Kipling,...
Scholastic
Narrative Writing
If you're looking to start a unit based around narrative writing, make sure to consider this resource while you're planning. This book covers five topics: writing personal narratives, writing narratives about others, writing narratives...
Road to Grammar
Health
Are your English language learners feeling unwell? Provide them with the tools to express how they are feeling and to talk about health in general. Included here are discussion activities, vocabulary, listening activities, grammar...
Curated OER
Be a Celebrity and Share Your Life with Us
Sixth graders discuss their likes, dislikes, hobbies, goals, and special events in their lives. They write a five paragraph autobiography focusing on style, transitions, and details. This is well-suited for either explanatory or...
Curated OER
The Missing Link
What is the missing link? Provide your class with this incomplete essay (it's missing transition words), and have writers place words from the transition word bank into the essay. Also, since only three of the five paragraphs are...
Tell City Schools
The Cay
Support your instruction of The Cay by Theodore Taylor with this extensive unit of materials. Provided here are prereading activities, worksheets and discussion questions for the entire book, and reading quizzes that you can use to check...
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....
Curated OER
The Correct Use of the Articles "A" and "An"
Young scholars discover the grammatical rules regarding articles. In this grammar activity, students study the rule regarding the use of "a" and "an" in writing. Young scholars are encouraged to discover the rule on their own and apply...
jc-schools
The Expository Essay
Did you ever create an awesome graphic organizer only to find that your class was completely baffled by how to use it? This resource not only provides you with a great graphic organizer for a standard five-paragraph essay, but also...
Curated OER
Paragraph Structure
Make sure your writers have the buns and the meat in their paragraph burgers with paragraph exercises. The resource gradually leads up to individuals writing their own paragraphs, starting with identification exercises, moving on to a...
Virginia Department of Education
Maintaining Organization, Clarity, Central Idea, and Unity
Introduce and challenge the essay organization skills of your junior high writers with the paper reconstruction activity in this demonstration. Theydetermine what the word organization means, and discover the basic organizational...
Curated OER
Democracy in Action
Students consider words that reflect their knowledge and opinions about democracy. They work in groups to research countries that have recently transitioned to democratic forms of government.
Curated OER
Search Warranted?
Young readers work on evaluating claims in a piece of informational text with the article "In New York, It's Open Bag or Find Exits" from the New York Times. They analyze current search procedures implemented to fight terrorism and...
Curriculum
Expository Writing
The beauty of the way this expository writing resource is structured is that the units can be presented as a complete writing workshop or sequenced throughout a course of study
Curated OER
What About Us? Women in the Civil War
Students research the role of women in the Civil War. For this Civil War unit, students research the role women played during the war. This unit includes eight different activities including vocabulary, writing prompts and a literature...
Curated OER
Write Your Own Cultural Connections
Learners write a cultural narrative. For this multicultural writing lesson, students create an expository narrative to teach others about their lives. Learners complete the narrative and use a buddy editing strategy to revise their papers.
Curated OER
The ABC's of the Three Little Pigs
Writers use varied sentence patterns. They listen to the story of Cinderella rewritten so that each sentence starts with the next letter of the alphabet. They create their own version of The Three Little Pigs using the same concept.
Curated OER
Scrambled Stories II
Review story elements with your class. They will use examples from a story to develop critical-thinking questions. Then they use a graphic organizer to describe the setting, character, and plot of the story, focusing on how they...
Curated OER
All About Me
Pupils explore autobiographical stories. They write about a personal experience that is significant and memorable. Students specifically explain the chosen events. They define autobiography and share their stories.
Curated OER
Reading Meet Writing
Thinking about introducing your middle schoolers to reading log journals? Try the approach suggested by this resource. After reading to the class an article or portion of a novel, demonstrate a Think Aloud and then model how to transform...
Curated OER
Do Heroes Have to Wear a Cape?
Young writers choose a person from American history, their community, or their family to use as the subject of a persuasive essay. The process begins with a discussion of the characteristics of a hero, the completion of a prewriting web,...
Curated OER
Interview! Magazine
Students interview a subject and write a biographical sketch for a fictional magazine. In this interview lesson, students choose a person to interview and create two sets of questions. Students conduct the interview. Students then write...
Curated OER
Happiness is A Warm Puppy
Pupils investigate dog breeds and write a short story from a dog's perspective. In this dog research and writing lesson, students watch the film, "Dog: The Early Years. They apply critical thinking skills to determine which type of dog...
Curated OER
The Raven: Creator of the Universe?
Students explore biology by researching birds in class. In this raven identification lesson, students utilize the Internet to identify the anatomy, habits and habitat of ravens. Students write descriptive paragraphs about ravens and read...