Virginia Department of Education
Identifying Audience and Purpose
Use a fun and creative activity to introduce junior high learners to how writing changes for different audiences and purposes. The activity begins with a reading by the instructor where teens visualize a food fight in the cafeteria. In...
Virginia Department of Education
Determining Purpose and Audience
Build the writing skills of your junior high wordsmiths with activities that introduce many essential skills of writing. As a class, they develop working definitions of formal vs. informal writing, explore different categories of...
Curated OER
Editorial Writing
Use your class's knowledge of pollution and water treatment to write an editorial to town citizens. They apply prior knowledge in order to compose a letter intended for newspaper publication, focusing on writing to an appropriate audience.
Curated OER
Research Techniques: Gathering Credible Sources
How can you spot a credible source? What even makes a resource reliable in the first place? Answer some of these questions with this presentation. Although intended for higher education, this PowerPoint could be modified for middle...
Curated OER
Basic Paragraph
Explore basic paragraphs. Young writers compose a topic sentence, supporting sentences, and a concluding sentence. This activity is intended for use with a SMART Board, a software technology web link is induced.
Curated OER
Introduction to Writing Traits and Writing Strategies
Intended for an audience of teachers, this presentation lays out the six traits of writing, the writing process, and the teaching process for traits and strategies. If you are trying to understand the writing process more fully, you...
Curated OER
Movie Poster: Persuasive Text
Learners create movie posters based upon short stories they've recently read. In this persuasive writing lesson students analyze a poster that is intended to persuade people to want to see the movie and convince Steven Spielberg to...
Curated OER
Made for the Movies
Students create a movie flyer to advertise the novel that the class has just finished reading in small groups. They search the Internet, format their flyer, select a slogan for their film, write a brief plot summary, without giving away...
Curated OER
Environmentally Friendly
What can your pupils do to promote better conditions for wildlife? After researching issues around wildlife management, class members use the Internet to locate three different organizations devoted to protecting wildlife. They then...
Curated OER
Writing an Original Fable
Students discover how to write fables. In this writing skill lesson, students review the literary elements of fables and take all of the steps in the writing process to create their own fables.
Novelinks
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: Writing Assignment
Ask learners to focus on one scene in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in order to write an analytical essay about Twain's ideas surrounding childhood. The final assignment in a unit, this writing prompt requires learners to use...
Curated OER
Introduction to the History of the Holocaust
The Holocaust is unbelievable! Examine this piece of history with your class. Using the Internet, research groups determine the relevance of information presented, compare how different sites present the same information, synthesize...
Curated OER
Punctuation (The Comma vs. The Semicolon)
Explore English by participating in a grammar correcting activity. Elementary and middle schoolers distinguish when to use commas from when to use semicolons. Then they correct twelve sentences by placing commas and semicolons in the...
Curated OER
Choose Your Words Wisely
Improve word choice! Writers use dictionaries and thesauruses to aid them in choosing exciting words to incorporate in their writing. They rewrite sentences and practice identifying words that can be replaced using a better word. Flip...
Curated OER
Speaker Report
Fifth through eighth graders think of themselves as newspaper reporters as they listen to a presentation by a guest speaker. As reporters, they take notes during the presentation. Using these notes, they create a rough draft and then a...
Curated OER
Biography: Telling Someone's Life Story
There are many different ways to help your students get excited about writing biographies.
Curated OER
Movie Genres
In this grammar worksheet, students match twelve movie genres with their appropriate definitions and examples from two answer banks and then translate the titles into Chinese. Students answer six questions regarding personal movie...
Curated OER
Presentation Delivery Skills
This is a very general description of steps to follow when helping learners to improve their digital presentation skills. It allows for 10 minutes to revise the presentation; a 40-minute practice period in small groups; and a 10-minute...
Curated OER
Chew on This
In this healthy eating activity, students read an excerpt on eating healthy and understanding the risks of eating fast food. The packet is a 13 page cross-circular project involving a number of subjects all pertaining to the Chew on This...
Curated OER
Sport Comparison and Contrast
Students read a piece of literature relating to sports and discuss sport, how it affects society, and the reasons people participate. They research sport during the time of pioneers and write a compare and contrast paper dealing with...
Curated OER
Persuade Me
Students develop their writing skills. For this writing strategies lesson, students examine persuasive writing techniques on order to write persuasive mailers.
Curated OER
How's the Weather?
Students explore earth science by researching the Internet. In this weather pattern activity, students utilize the website weather.com to analyze the weather in different geographic locations. Students view charts and graphs based on...