Austin Independent School District
Big Mac Paragraph Organizer
A colorful image of a hamburger provides food for thought. Essay writers record their introduction on the bun top and the conclusion on the bottom portion of the bun. All the meat, the details, are recorded between the buns.
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Essay Writing
Young scholars complete essay writing activities. In this essay writing lesson, students use an outline activity to learn about the advantages and disadvantages for various essay writing types. Young scholars also break down the...
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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,...
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Young Learner's Writing Workshop 1
Students become familiar with writing an essay in English. They are given an overview of basic essay writing styles. Students develop skills that are used when analyzing texts as the basis of their essays.
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Pair-Share: Constructing Paragraph Order
Young scholars write with controlled and/or subtle organization. They identify the main idea and explicit details. Students analyze paragraph and essay structure. They utilize context clues to identify organization.
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Narrative Writing
Binoculars are used as a metaphor for good descriptive writing. Class members first view a small picture and then an enlarged view of the same image in which the details come into focus. Next, learners examine a paragraph lacking sensory...
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
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Compare and Contrast a Cookie and a Cracker
Students write an essay comparing and contrasting two like items. In this informative writing lesson, students use a Venn diagram to compare and contrast a cracker and an Oreo cookie. Students write an informative five paragraph essay on...
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Writing Organizers
Eight graphic organizers to choose from? That's right! Each of these organizers relates to writing or reading. From narrowing a writing topic, to responding to literature, to planning a writing project, you'll find many purposes for...
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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...
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The Writing Process
Introducing your emergent writers to the writing process? Consider using this presentation that gives a clear overview of the steps involved in producing a piece of writing. The elements of an essay are then introduced; however, the only...
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It’s Your Birthday! – Conventions: Revision and Proofreading
Happy birthday! Celebrate everyone's birthday with this writing activity, which prompts seventh graders to research historical events in a country at the time of their birth to create an essay. Working in pairs, they proofread each...
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Review of a Novel Project
This review of a novel project is a great way to ensure accountability for independent reading. The assignment sheet, templates, samples, and rubrics are all part of the packet materials.
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Writing - The Persuasive Essay
Pupils, in groups, work together to develop a five-paragraph essay that defends the group's viewpoint on an assigned topic. Each student in the group writes one paragraph.
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Music and Lyrics
Eighth graders analyze lyrics from songs from a variety of genres. In this musical analysis lesson, 8th graders write an essay about their life plans in which they discuss the lyrics of U2's song, "One." They tell how the writings of Dr....
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It's Your Birthday! Expository Writing Unit 2
Students create an expository essay. In this writing lesson Students are assigned a country and must conduct research surrounding a historic event that occurred in that country at the time of their birth.
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Developing an Outline
A lot of writers don't like creating an outline before writing the first draft of their paper. Introduce them to what an effective and organized outline looks like with this presentation. Designed for higher education, you could easily...