Nosapo
What Is in a Sentence, Paragraph, and Story?
Language arts is made up of many parts. Learners review the parts of a sentence, as well as how to make a simple sentence into a complex sentence, before examining full paragraphs and identifying the topic, body, and concluding sentence...
Curated OER
Essay Writing
Are your learners working towards their GED? First they study the GED essay rubric, and then they read a sample essay as a group. After studying the basic elements, they write an essay of their own. After peer editing, they revise their...
University of North Carolina
Should I Use “I”?
Despite the formal nature of academic writing, personal pronouns frequently appear in high school and college papers. While your first instinct may be to cross them out, sometimes it's okay to use them, an idea covered in a handout that...
University of North Carolina
Style
Just like you choose your clothes to ensure they fit the occasion, you should choose your words deliberately while writing. Style, the main topic of one handout in a series on writing skills, involves choosing words carefully and paying...
University of North Carolina
Verb Tenses
Twelve categories of verbs exist in the future tense, ranging from simple present to future perfect progressive, but only three have a place in academic writing. Those three tenses make up the content of an informational handout that...
Film English
Coca-Cola Ad
Have your class members consider how their lifestyle choices may differ from those of their grandparents when they were younger. After brainstorming and discussing differences in lifestyle, pupils watch a Coca-Cola advertisement that...
University of North Carolina
Conditionals: Verb Tense in “If” Clauses
"If you give a mouse a cookie, then he's going to ask for a glass of milk." These iconic words from Laura Numeroff's classic tale offer a great example of conditionals, a topic covered in the handout as part of a larger writing series...
Curated OER
Peer Editing Checklist
A handout to guide peer editors, this checklist delineates common problems with paragraph structure and specific proofreading items to check. It also provides encouragement about the collaborative part of the writing process. Formats...
University of Kansas
Feelings - Thematic Unit
Boost language skills with a unit all about feelings. Scholars from all grade levels take part in several lessons that incorporate specific vocabulary terms and adjectives while discussing their feelings with their peers. Reading...
Open Oregon Educational Resources
Conventions 101: A Functional Approach to Teaching (and Assessing!) Grammar and Punctuation
Let's eat kids. Let's eat, kids. Commas make a difference! Conventions 101: A Functional Approach to Teaching (and Assessing!) Grammar and Punctuation explains ways to teach the importance and use of conventions. Learners take part in...
McGraw Hill
Grammar Practice Workbook
Make sure your pupils exercise their grammar muscles with this collection of worksheets. Organized into units, the packet covers everything from the parts of speech to sentence structure to punctuation.
Film English
Gratitude
Encourage your class to experience gratitude. In order to do so, discuss what your pupils are grateful for and show them a short film about gratitude. The class watches the video a couple of times before responding to a quotation taken...
Film English
Be Happy
What makes your pupils happy? Find out with a lesson centered around this theme. Class members come up with things that make them happy and write about them in preparation for quick group project. Learners watch and discuss a short film...
Film English
Fear of Flying
A bird that's afraid of flying? See what happens to this character when it's time to fly south. Over the course of the instructional activity, pupils discuss fears in general, share their fears, make predictions about the film, and view...
Road to Grammar
Language Expansion
Improve your pupils' language skills with these discussions and activities. There are four topics included here, and each is paired with discussion prompts (small group and whole class), student handouts, and teacher notes. After...
The New York Times
Collateral Damage? Researching a Connection Between Video Games and Violence
Hook your class into an exploration of and discussion about violence in video games with a cute animal clip and a video game trailer. After a quick discussion about how media can affect mood, class members read a related article and...
Road to Grammar
100 Ice-Breaker Questions
What if you could ease your English language learners into class with engaging questions? You can do just that with these questions. The questions, designed to prepare learners for working with English, are grouped by topics, such as...
Curated OER
the Connectors
Learners recognize and explain meaning of connectors, punctuate a compound sentence using connectors, and compose compound sentences using the correct connectors.
Perkins School for the Blind
Encouraging Students Who are Blind or Visually Impaired to Express Their Feelings and Explore Imagination
Being expressive in a creative, empathetic, or imaginative way is not only fun, it builds good pre-writing and communication skills. Learners with visual impairments have a roundtable discussion session where several sentence frames are...
University of North Carolina
Relative Clauses
Knock, knock. Who's there? To. To who? No! To whom. Knowing when to use who versus whom is just one of the many topics covered on a handout about relative pronouns. Writers discover how to incorporate words such as whose, that, which,...
Brigham Young University
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead: Fishbowl Discussion
After reading through Act II of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, take some time to discuss the references to death in the play. For this fishbowl discussion, learners prepare questions, practice answering individually and with...
Film English
365 Grateful
Encourage gratitude with a short film. Pupils first explore what grateful means and come up with five things they are grateful for. After a discussion, they watch the short film twice and discuss the content after each viewing, focusing...
Curated OER
English Skills Worksheet
Help your class brush up on their spelling words and review lots of other English skills in the process. They are given 10 activities to complete to review parts of speech, compound words, synonyms, and alliteration. Creative writing is...
Curated OER
The Editing Process
Students edit and critique essays. In this editing and critiquing lesson plan, students examine a sample essay and edit it. Students read the essay aloud to determine the areas that need to be revised. Students then write their own essay...