Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Need a model for character education? Benjamin Franklin presents himself as in a constant state of striving to become the man he hoped to be, making his autobiography is far more accessible to learners than those of people who consider...
Curated OER
"Snapshot" Exercises & Sensory Detail Word Bank
Read a sample of creative descriptive writing to your science class. Discuss how writing can be used to record and communicate observations that scientists make. Reading selections and thought-provoking questions are suggested. Also...
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Sequencing
Are you looking for a way to teach sequence of events in your narrative writing unit? Bring this instructional activity to your middle school class, as it prompts young writers to create a narrative sequence map of events that have...
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Let's Go Exploring!
Use a Courbet painting of a cave or tunnel opening to reinforce the importance of descriptive writing. Writers of all ages use sensory details to describe what the scene depicts as they pretend to be in the painting. Then they imagine...
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Constructing Narrative from the Migrant Experience in Literature
Excerpts from John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and from John Fante's Ask the Dust, as well as a variety of primary source documents provide the background for an examination of the migrant experience from 1920-1945.
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The Paragraph
Review the components of a well-written paragraph with your class. Be sure your writers include a topic sentence supported with main ideas and followed by a conclusion. Unity, coherence, and transition words are emphasized. Experiment...
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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,...
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Writing a Personal Narrative
Young scholars learn characteristics of an effective personal narrative. In this personal narrative lesson, students discover ways to show rather than tell, adding richness and detail to their writing. Young scholars evaluate a news...
Alabama Learning Exchange
The Big Bang Theory: An Evidence-Based Argument
What evidence supports the big bang theory? Individuals analyze scholarly resources about the the theory and develop arguments backed by evidence. They brainstorm, share ideas, watch a video, and read articles to complete a graphic...
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Writing Skills: LETTERS HOME
Students compose a descriptive letter to their families. In this descriptive writing lesson students write a letter as if they have left their family for a new country and will try to convince their families to join them. They will...
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Write into Fantasy, Humor and Suspense
Students discuss the characteristics of several different writing genres. They are given a prompt to and work in groups to continue writing in the style of a humorous, fantasy or suspense story. They share their stories with the class.
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Lesson Plan 8: Setting and Mood
What mood does this story evoke? How are setting and mood linked? Young novelists explore the different emotions brought about by writing, starting by journaling things that inspire their own feelings. Examine the word mood, looking into...
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Persuasion in Print
Advertisers target teenagers. Groups select three magazine advertisements for similar products, analyze the appeals used in each, create a poster that features the persuasive techniques used, and present their findings to the class. The...
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Photographic Memories
Explore how photographs can represent a whole story to a viewer. Middle schoolers work on narrative writing techniques in this lesson, focusing on photographs from the New York Times to write first-person descriptive narratives....
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Locational Writing
Students go outside to the playground and write a piece in the style of beat poets based on what they see and hear outside.
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Counting Up/Down Stories
Mirroring Jerry Spinelli's style in Wringer, chapter 5, pupils use the "counting up/down technique" to recall an important moment in their lives. In the book, the character is being punched, and between blows he remembers details that...
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Indescribably Excellent Descriptions
Students train their eyes to look more closely at detail and imperfections as they write "indescribably" excellent descriptions of places, people, and things!
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Organizing One’s Thoughts
Students take a closer look at the organization of written pieces. In this writing skills lesson, students examine transitions, repetition, parallelism, and other organizational patterns in writing.
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Homemade Holidays
Foster your high schoolers' creativity - and generosity - with this writing lesson. After reading the article "Homemade Holiday Gifts" by Frances Janisch (from the GALE Student Resource Center - Gold), pupils meet in groups to brainstorm...
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A Monster of a Metaphor
What do Jeep advertisements and Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath have in common? They both employ the art of the extended metaphor! Using the Six-Trait Writing model, learners begin to work on their own extended metaphors. Development...
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Building a Structure With Legos: Oral Communication and Process Analysis
Illustrate the importance of specific details and clear directions. Sitting back-to-back, partners take turns building a Lego structure and giving directions to their partners to create an identical structure. The subsequent discussion...
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Creating Bloggers
Blogs provide the motivation for this richly detailed writing lesson plan. After viewing blogs on various websites, class members pick topics, create a blog, and post an entry. Your bloggers then evaluate their work using evaluation...
National Endowment for the Humanities
“House by the Railroad”: A Painting and a Poem for the Common Core
Introduce your class to ekphrastic poetry with an exercise that asks them to examine Edward Hooper's painting House by the Railroad and Edward Hirsch's poem "Edward Hopper and the House By the Railroad." After a close reading of the two...
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Minnesota-China Connections: Writing Prompts
Students write a short essay in response to a writing prompt related to a theme or issue raised within the Minnesota-China Connection Web site.